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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
-
-Language: English
-
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
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+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43286 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9_s._
-
-EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9_s._
-
-LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Execution of a Sow.]
-
-
-
-
- THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND
- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
- BY E. P. EVANS
- AUTHOR OF
- "ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,"
- "EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC., ETC.
-
-
- [Illustration]
-
-
- LONDON
- WILLIAM HEINEMANN
- MCMVI
-
-
-
-
-_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Sources--Amira's distinction between retributive and
- preventive processes--Addosio's incorrect designation of
- the latter as civil suits--Inconsistent attitude of the
- Church in excommunicating animals--Causal relation of crime
- to demoniacal possession--Squatter sovereignty of devils--
- _Aura corrumpens_--Diabolical infestation and lack of
- ventilation--"Bewitched kine"--Greek furies and Christian
- demons--Homicidal bees, laying cocks and crowing hens--
- Theory of the personification of animals--Beasts in
- Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws--Animal prosecutions
- and witchcraft--The Mosaic code in Christian courts--Pagan
- deities as demons--Born malefactors among beasts--The
- theory of punishment in modern criminology _p._ 1
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
- Criminal prosecution of rats--Chassenée appointed to defend
- them--Report of the trial--Chassenée employed as counsel in
- other cases of this kind--His dissertation on the subject--
- Nature of his argument--Authorities and precedents--The
- withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and
- explained by Dr. Trench--Eels and blood-suckers in Lake
- Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of
- Heidelberg theologians--White bread turned black, and
- swallows, fish, and flies destroyed by anathema--St.
- Pirminius expels reptiles--Vermifugal efficacy of St.
- Magnus' crosier--Papal execratories--Animals regarded by
- the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of
- clergy--Methods of procedure--Jurisdiction of the courts--
- Records of judicial proceedings against insects--Important
- trial of weevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over
- more than eight months--Untenableness of Ménebréa's
- theory--Summary of the pleadings--Futile attempts at
- compromise--Final decision doubtful--St. Eldrad and the
- snakes--Views of Thomas Aquinas--Distinction between
- excommunication and anathema--"Sweet beasts and stenchy
- beasts"--Animals as incarnations of devils--Their
- diabolical character assumed in papal formula for blessing
- water to kill vermin--Amusing treatise by Père Bougeant on
- this subject--All animals animated by devils, and all
- pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them--Demons
- the real causes of diseases--Father Lohbauer's prescription
- in such cases--Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.--
- Recent instances of demoniacal possession--Hoppe's
- psychological explanation of them--Charcot on faith-cures--
- Why not the duty of the Catholic Church to inculcate
- kindness to animals--Zoölatry a form of demonolatry--Gnats
- especially dangerous devils--Bodelschwingh's discovery of
- the _bacillus infernalis_--Gaspard Bailly's disquisition
- with specimens of plaints, pleas, etc.--Ayrault protests
- against such proceedings--Hemmerlein's treatise on
- exorcisms--Criminal prosecution of field-mice--Vermin
- excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne--Protocol of
- judicial proceedings against caterpillars--Conjurers of
- cabbage-worms--Swallows proscribed by a Protestant
- parson--Custom of writing letters of advice to rats--Writs
- of ejectment served on them--Rhyming rats in Ireland--
- Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos--Capital
- punishment of larger quadrupeds--Berriat-Saint-Prix's
- Reports and Researches--List of culprits--Beasts burned and
- buried alive and put to the rack--Swine executed for
- infanticide--Bailly's bill of expenses--An ox decapitated
- for its demerits--Punishment of buggery--Cohabitation of a
- Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy--Trial of a
- sow and six sucklings for murder--Bull sent to the gallows
- for killing a lad--A horse condemned to death for
- homicide--A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural
- crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie's investigation of the
- subject--Racine's satire on such prosecutions in _Les
- Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat the law of the
- primitive man and the savage--The application of this iron
- rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit pig not to
- be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects--
- Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell sentenced
- to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection--
- Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment prescribed for mad
- dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of talion and decrees
- of corruption of blood--Examples in ancient and modern
- legislation--Cicero approves of such penalties for
- political offences--Survival of this conception of justice
- in theology--Constitutio Criminalis Carolina--Lombroso
- opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism--
- Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in English
- law--Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland--
- Blackstone's theory of it untenable--Penalties inflicted
- for suicide--Ancient legislation on this subject--
- Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in England _p._ 18
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
- Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
- Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner's sword the
- intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
- untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
- ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
- vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
- little children "even on Friday"--Pope Stephen VI. brings
- the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern
- conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
- jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
- pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
- these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval
- penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
- sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--"Blue Laws" a great
- advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and
- penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
- abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity
- of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic
- sense--Theories of the origin and nature of crime--
- Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the
- encephalon--Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat,
- Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly
- dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures
- proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not
- sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--
- Difficulty of defining insanity--Coleridge's definition too
- inclusive--Predestination and evolution--Criminality among
- the lower animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
- Schopenhauer's doctrine of responsibility for character--
- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret--
- "Method in Madness" not uncommon--Social safety the supreme
- law--Application of this principle to "Cranks"--Spirit of
- imitation peculiarly strong in such classes--Contagiousness
- of crime--Criminology now in a period of transition _p._ 193
-
-
- APPENDIX
-
- A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
- agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
- coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
- Amblevins _p._ 259
-
- B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
- Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
-
- C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
- against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
-
- D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
- the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
- of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
-
- E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
- commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
-
- F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
- of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
-
- G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
- Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
- of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a
- new glove _p._ 335
-
- H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
- acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous
- tournois from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for
- having hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child
- in the parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
-
- I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
- Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
- bailiff and the king's proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
- certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
- had devoured a small child _p._ 338
-
- J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
- Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont
- de Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and
- six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and
- to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
-
- K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
- Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of
- the Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
- Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
- which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
- the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
- sows _p._ 342
-
- L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
- the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
- be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
-
- M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
- 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
- sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
- the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
-
- N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
- prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
- Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near Chartres, against a
- pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
- this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
- for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
-
- O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor
- of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon,
- condemning a pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide
- committed on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
-
- P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
- and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
- Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout
- to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a
- girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
- said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on
- penalty of an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
-
- Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
- by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupré, for furiously
- killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
- years of age _p._ 358
-
- R. Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
- dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
- capon _p._ 360
-
- S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
- University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
- killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
-
- INDEX _p._ 373
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled "Bugs and Beasts before the Law," and "Modern and Mediæval
-Punishment," which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira's _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d'Addosio's _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler's _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Ménebréa, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenée, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.
-
-Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-"metaphysical aid" and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
-
-D'Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
-maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
-
-The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.
-
-It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-"godliness is profitable" not only "unto all things," but also, as
-mediæval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his "son Timothy" never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-_benedictiones locorum_.
-
-We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-"bewitched kine." European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
-
-The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediæval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-"transgressed in the thing accursed." It was the same horror of aiding
-and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-"basilisk-egg," or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.
-
-A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrüggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediæval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king's ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrüggen's
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bâle was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.
-
-The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind's eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.
-
-Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
-deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des göttlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
-
-It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
-
-In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin's _L'Homme et la Bête_ (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
-
-The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder's _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
-(Antverpiæ, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled "De Damno Pecuario" is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
-
-The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
-
-The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are "Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere," in _Miscellen aus
-der neuesten ausländischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Jörgensen's _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella's "Gli Animali sotto Processo," in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Ménabréa, and Soldan's "La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia," in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrüggen's theory.
-
-In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
-
-It is said that Bartholomew Chassenée,[1] a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l'Evêque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop's
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenée to defend them.
-
-In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenée
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.
-
-At a later period of his life Chassenée was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrières and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d'Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenée thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.
-(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]
-
-In the report of the trial published in the _Thémis Jurisconsulte_ for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenée conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.
-
-Chassenée is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.
-
-This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenée now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.
-"The principal question," he says, "is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent." He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: "First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through
-procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication." Chassenée's method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.
-
-The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediæval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.
-
-His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by "whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero." The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called "wisdom of ages," renders him peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.
-
-In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenée refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David's malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God's curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, "Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: "If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less" (_cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).
-
-An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: "It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false." According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that "drew on it the curse." The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: "Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart." As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediæval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, "for the time of figs was not yet."
-
-A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenée is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil's first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that "no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds," all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since "no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema." Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer's dissertation.
-
-Coming down to more recent times, Chassenée mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib's host, "all dead corpses." William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis
-ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and "no other remedy was at hand."
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-"deacons with fly-flaps," who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed "to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth."
-
-The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints'
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus' Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter's Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.
-
-In his "First Counsel" Chassenée not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)
-_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. § 5.] For this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word "conjurer"
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.
-
-Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenée thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediæval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.
-
-Chassenée also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that "things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them." Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where "Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass."
-
-Chassenée endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zoö-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenée insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that "sin is not imputed when there is no law." He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be "well-thought, well-said and well-done," not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata
-hûkhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.
-
-Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; "and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema." In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallicè urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenée, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man's sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.
-
-The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charançon)
-known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different
-names, amblevin, bèche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.
-
-Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-François Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: "Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our sins." Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A _procès-verbal_,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.
-
-About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Léon Ménebréa, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: _De l'origine de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-âge contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie_.
-
-It may be proper to add that Ménebréa's theory of "the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given," is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that "these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity."
-
-This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediæval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.
-
-But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before "his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official" by the
-syndics and procurators, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: "Formerly by virtue of divine services and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication."
-
-In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario
-moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).
-
-The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants' advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, François Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants' plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d'être_
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs' replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, "a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God." It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.
-
-On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.
-
-Meanwhile, in view of the law's long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d'Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs' advocate, François Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-"without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals," and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it "in good form and of perpetual validity," provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed "L. Prunier,
-curial," and stamped with the seal of the commune.
-
-But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an "Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien," containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the _procès-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till "the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation," which fell on the 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.
-
-At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis_). The "egregious Petremand Bertrand," in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.
-
-The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.
-
-In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: "_pro visitatione III flor._," by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then "_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._," which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-"_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._," three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop's official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_
-Appendix A.)
-
-In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man's labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.
-
-It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Père Rochex:
-Gloire de l'Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of
-Briançon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God's creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediæval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.
-
-Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-"waived" or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traité des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.
-
-One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (_s'en prendre à Dieu_). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediæval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.
-
-Thomas Aquinas, the "angelic doctor," in his _Summa Theologiæ_ raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man's
-subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother's womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of "the beauty of Israel"; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.
-
-It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan "instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore proper to be cursed," as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75),
-and adds "the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment." This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
-
-But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was "printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,"
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-"several fine moralities," and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes
-doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
-
- "Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind."
-
-According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
-
-Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: "Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious." "We are all," adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, "more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended." Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
-
-This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,
-_hûkhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhûkhta_,
-_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these "mighty opposites," the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that "dreadful idealization of wickedness" which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.
-
-Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast
-
- "Red in tooth and claw
- With ravin,"
-
-that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the
-
- "One far-off divine event,
- To which the whole creation moves,"
-
-consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.
-
-Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature's handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to
-
- "Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die."
-
-The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates Angrômainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (_speñtô mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer's)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.
-
-But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediæval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds'
-claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, "dire
-chimeras" and other "delicate monsters," there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Dædalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actæon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Mæra
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.
-
-Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: "I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought." In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to "preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits."
-
-This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Père Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: "_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_," and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes' _Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.
-
-If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.
-
-But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God's mercy or wrath is lost. "Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion." The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.
-
-Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been "prepared" for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two "exceeding
-fierce" demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, "Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?" This question has no
-significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Père Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.
-
-Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime. Some of them are engaged in "going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it," in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-"science falsely so called." Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to "forsake the devil and all his works."
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.
-
-The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.
-
-The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any
-mediæval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale
-Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_.
-
-That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of "a maiden of angelic beauty" in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stöcker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: "O, that Jew! Didn't
-he have to drink gall?" When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him "go to hell," which he forthwith did, "moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-'Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!' The voice was so sad,"
-adds the bishop, "that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil."
-
-Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, "Every knee in
-heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus," the fallen "Son
-of the Morning" retorted, "Not Luci, not Luci--never!"
-
-It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstätt. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-"Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops." In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession "is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church." Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.
-
-Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the "metaphysical aid" of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.
-
-Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that "what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it." But while affirming that "evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind," and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed, the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.
-
-The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on _Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklärung des Besessenseins_
-(_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. "The priest," he
-says, "exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils." Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of "priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical means of healing," and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-_Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891_ (Saarbrücken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the "holy coat" in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called "documentary proofs," consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-"were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner." He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person's own mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole."
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole." Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people's lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum's assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on "Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition" in Appleton's _Popular Science Monthly_ for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).
-
-The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it "hath no skill in surgery."
-
-But to return from this digression, Père Bougeant's theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, "enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is the first act of God's vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell."
-
-Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angrô-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.
-
-There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. "What matters it,"
-replies the Jesuit Father, "whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned." The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about "des
-Pudels Kern."
-
-This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim _universitas non delinquit_ has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, _quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus_, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That "the devil is an ass" is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-_débris_ of exploded mythologies adrift on the stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as
-
- "Der Herr der Ratten und der Mäuse,
- Der Fliegen, Frösche, Wanzen, Läuse."
-
- "The Lord of rats and of the mice,
- Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice."
-
-The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zoölatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. "It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of an elephant." The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person's stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the _Dies Caniculuares_ of
-Majolus (Meyer: _Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters_, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.
-
-As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. "Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing." The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, "which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason." Furthermore, it explains why "all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase." Of the millions of
-germs, of which "great creating nature" is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing "any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils," which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. "This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects." The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.
-
-Father Bougeant calls his lucubration "a new system of philosophy"; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII. distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant's ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he "protests too much, methinks." In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.
-
-Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(_fürchterliche Zauberteufel_). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.
-
-A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-"fish or cacodemons" (_pisces seu cacodemones_), and maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenée on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.
-
-In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls "demonic infection" due to the presence of the _bacillus
-infernalis_ in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of _bacilli infernales_ which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Père Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.
-
-The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled _Traité des Monitoires_, already mentioned, treats "Of the
-Excellence of Monitories" and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-"one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them."
-
-M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as _post hoc,
-ergo propter hoc_. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which "came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (_i.e._ brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood." Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects "were as long as a man's
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure." Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew's
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of "inch of candle," and anathematized them "in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, "having six wings with two teeth harder than flint"
-and "darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm," laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of _De
-Civitate Dei_ as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.
-
-In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.
-
-The most important portion of M. Bailly's work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (_requeste des
-habitans_), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (_plaidoyer des habitans_), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (_plaidoyer pour les insectes_), the
-replication of the inhabitants (_réplique des habitans_), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (_réplique du defendeur_), the conclusions of the bishop's
-proctor (_conclusions du procureur episcopal_), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (_sentence du juge d'église_), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.
-
-The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:
-
-"Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Cæsar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the _Iliad_, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; _nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus_: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers, of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: 'Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.'" The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a "horse-load
-of citations" from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: "The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray."
-
-It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a rhetorical hotchpotch of "matter and
-impertinency mixed" as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.
-
-Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:
-
-"Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(_bestioles_), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.
-
-"Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph _Si quadrupes_, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: _Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret_.
-
-"The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute _De poen. tem. litig._ As regards these animals there is no _causa
-justa litigandi_; they are not bound in any manner, _non tenentur ex
-contractu_, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, _neque ex quasi contractu_, _neque ex
-stipulatione_, _neque ex pacto_, and still less _ex delicto seu quasi_,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.
-
-"Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(_qui ne porte coup_); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing _mal à propos_ or in vain: _Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Now I leave it to you to decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: _cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent_."
-
-The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: _quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet_. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as _extra ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction, as the apostle Paul says: "Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without." _Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est._
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (_quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis_).
-
-A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them "every green herb for meat," a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero's treatise _De
-Officiis_, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (_s'en prendre à Dieu_), who has said: "I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number."
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.
-
-The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. "It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(_d'ores en avant_) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted."
-
-"To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness." The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of "vile and paltry
-vermin." In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs' advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. "But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death."
-
-That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): "Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment," _i.e._ unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-"like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to "send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.
-
-The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.
-
-After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:
-
-"The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (_à la volée_), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it." [This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-"Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."] The bishop's proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. "It is truly a deep sea," he says, "in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (_lettres closes_)." He
-suggests it may be "because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors," and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (_liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium_). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.
-
-After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop's proctor is simply an
-_oratio pro domo_, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.
-
-The official begins by stating the case as that of "The People _versus_
-Locusts," declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-"by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,"
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help and solace. "Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:
-
-"In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere." If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech "Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils," to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially "the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and particularly offensive character." (_Vide_ Appendix B.)
-
-It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical _non sequiturs_ and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediæval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his _Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble_ (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: "_si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic._" Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(_Traicté des Peines et des Amendes_, p. 250; cf. _Thémis Jurisconsulte_,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that "if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed." The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, _lieutenant-criminel au siége
-présidial d'Angers_, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: _Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, à la Mémoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimées et aux Contumax_, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (_legales homines_) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that "a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality" could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man's memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.
-
-Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but "in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority," the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who "defended them with great dignity"; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.
-
-In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,[3] which damaged the crops
-"by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow." But "in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress," a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, "to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings."
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvæ and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that "a free safe-conduct and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy." (_Vide_
-Appendix C.)
-
-An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his "dearly
-beloved" are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-"with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm" and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by "a common
-prayer from house to house" to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: "Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah's ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case, however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o'clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice." The priest
-then exhorts his "dear children" devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (_Vide_ Appendix D.)
-
-There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger's trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be "utterly intolerable." This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.
-
-The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thüring Fricker
-to prosecute the case: "We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thüring Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (_brucorum_), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479."
-
-The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less "of the
-law's delay" than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: "Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:
-
-"We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. _Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi._"
-The phrase _das si beswärt werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers_ does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be _brutum fulmen_; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, "owing to our sins." Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.
-
-The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah's ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.
-
-Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: "By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God." Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: "O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."
-
-In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza's _Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna_ it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right "does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject." Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.
-
-More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhão, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God's creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an _argumentum ad
-monachum_ by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes'
-_Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes_, etc. Vol. V., Lisboá, 1747.]
-
-About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-"vergifteten Würmer," and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.
-
-In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Görres'
-_Historisch-Politische Blätter_ for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: "If you don't leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof." This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.
-
-The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to "the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature." This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By "fervent
-desire" merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man's body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-"for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute." Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as "doing in the spirit of the will," an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
-"the objectivation of the will." Indeed, Schopenhauer's postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.
-
-It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man's spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by "Augustus Duke and Elector," wherein he commends the
-"Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel Greysser," for
-having "put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God's word and of Christian devotion." But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (_durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege_); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See Appendix E.)
-
-A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on "Conjuring Rats," printed
-in _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_ (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, "Maine, Oct. 31, 1888," and addressed in
-business style to "Messrs. Rats and Co." The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they "can live snug
-and happy" in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use "Rough on Rats." This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.
-
-In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:
-
- "Ratton and mouse,
- Lea' the puir woman's house,
- Gang awa' owre by to 'e mill,
- And there ane and a' ye'll get your fill."
-
-In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:
-
- "A running stream they dare na cross."
-
-In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.
-
-It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or "rhyming" rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in _As you Like It_ Rosalind says in reference to Orlando's verses:
-"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember." Randolph declares:
-
- "My poets
- Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar,
- Rhime 'em to death, as they do rats in Ireland."
-
-Ben Jonson is still more specific:
-
- "Rhime 'em to death, as they do Irish rats,
- In drumming tunes."
-
-From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.
-
-In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(_la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:
-
- "Sortez, sortez d'ici, mulots!
- Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
- Quittez, quittez ces blés!
- Allez, vous trouverez
- Dans la cave du curé
- Plus à boire qu'à manger."
-
-The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:
-
- "Taupes et mulots,
- Sors de mon clos,
- Ou je te casse les os;
- Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
- Je te brûle la barbe jusqu'aux os."
-
-The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of "Callithumpian" music.
-
-Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Évêques du Mans_, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.)
-
-The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled [Greek: ta
-geôponika] and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by
-the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is
-given for getting rid of field-mice:
-
-"Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces." The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the "Geoponics"
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee's letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.
-
-In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: "In yonder
-village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)"; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebräuche aus Thüringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ's death and the world's
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
-
- "Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
- Protect this house and burn the rest."
-
-Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D'Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_
-Appendix F for a still fuller list.)
-
-The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (_Amira_, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.
-
-Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of "Phélippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens," for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-"having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (_étoit allé de vie a trépas_)." In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-"buried all alive" (_enfoui tout vif_), "for having devoured a little
-child in l'hostel de la Couronne." Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, "on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,"
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Würtemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-"powerful medicine" to stay the epizoötic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.
-
-Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (_L'Homme et la Bête._ Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that "the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt," is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. "The question," which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.
-
-In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man's
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a "master of high works" (_maître des hautes oeuvres_), as he
-was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
-
-We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinité_) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l'Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, _la châsse de la bannière_ (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
-
-In 1394, a pig was found guilty of "having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff." The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of "fifty souls
-tournois." (_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:
-
- "Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
- perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
- bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
- sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.
-
- "Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis."
-
-This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-"in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403." (See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.
-
-Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus "Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche," acknowledges the
-receipt, "through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (_vicomte_) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king's bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison." The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with "Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July," when it was hanged "for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child" (_pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant_). For the pig's board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account "ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape." The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by "Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche." (_Vide_ Appendix J.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged "until death ensueth," for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d'Or,
-was left hanging "for a long space" on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: _Histoire de Saint-Omer_, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Châlons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: _dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum_. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: _De poena bruti
-delinquentis_. Lugduni, MDCX.)
-
-On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become _participes criminis_,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (_Vide_
-Appendix K.)
-
-A peculiar custom is referred to in the _procès verbal_ of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be "hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet." The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. "From time immemorial," we are told, "the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked." The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.
-
- "'Twill be recorded for a precedent;
- And many an error, by the same example
- Will rush into the state: it cannot be."
-
-In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, "assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice." Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter's child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there "hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city." For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.
-
-Buggery (_offensa cujus nominatio crimen est_, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (_punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur_), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad, a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be "hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted." A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (_assommée_) by the executioner of high justice and
-"the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes." It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (_Vide_ Appendix L.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his _Ordre
-Judiciaire_, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(_multoties_) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-_Magnalia Christi Americana_ (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that "on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities." He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, "devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people." Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, "lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret." He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wünschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined that in
-burning the bodies the man's should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-"who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare," was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.
-
-For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive "together with the minutes of
-the trial;" his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master's crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore "they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature." This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by "Pintuel Prieur Curé" and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.
-
-The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire "according to common custom"
-("_so ein_ Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten." Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his _Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium_ (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that "if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(_Caviller oder Feldmeister_)." The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. "If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated, then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby" [Jacobi Döpleri,
-_Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen_, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]
-
-All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediæval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: "Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live." In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, _gravius_ and _gravissimum_; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Döpler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the _peccatum gravissimum_; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.
-
-It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, "since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog" (Döpl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, "inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts."
-
-But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of "murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny," and sentenced to be "hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esproné_)." Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but "in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother's crime." Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit "on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin," the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the _procès verbal_ has been preserved. (See
-Appendix M.)
-
-Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, "on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts." The pig was condemned to be "hanged and
-executed by justice." The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
-
-According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.
-
-On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having "strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife," and
-proceeded against "as justice and reason would desire and require."
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified "on their oath and
-conscience" that "on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (_de ce siècle trépassa_)." The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, "We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin." The crime was committed "on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants," and the
-prosecution was conducted by "Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place." The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)
-
-In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff's declaration that the pig killed the child and ate of its
-flesh, "although it was Friday," and this violation of the _jejunium
-sextae_, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker's
-offence.
-
-Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trochères, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place "under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells." It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediæval courts, the chronicles of mediæval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediæval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare's day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano's invective against Shylock:
-
- "thy currish spirit
- Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
- Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
- And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
- Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
- Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous."
-
-That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its æsthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the "good old
-times" of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.
-
-The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediæval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D'Addosio, _Bestie
-Delinquenti_, pp. 23-5).
-
-In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left "such beasts without a good and sure guard." Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, "a sow with a black snout," "for
-the cruelty and ferocity" shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having "eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant," was condemned to be "exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis." The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (_Vide_
-Appendix P.)
-
-But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.
-
-There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed "for its demerits." Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupré near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be "executed until death
-inclusively," for having "killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont," who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean Boullet. (_Vide_ Appendix Q.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.
-
-In 1474, the magistrates of Bâle sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake "for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg." The _auto da
-fé_ was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his _Kurze Basler Chronik_, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Prättigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bâle.
-
-The _oeuf coquatri_ was supposed to be the product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and "death-darting eye" destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled "Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l'on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,"
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon's egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling "a small serpent coiled." He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like "a hoarse cock" (_un coq
-enroué_), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(_Mémoires de l'Académie de Sciences._ Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)
-
-A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock [Greek: epteinaria], a name
-which would imply some sort of winged creature. It was "sighted like the
-basilisk," and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal
-qualities.
-
-In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that "it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet" (Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, § 197 in Giraud:
-_Essai sur l'Histoire du Droit Francais_, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.
-
-Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his "appearing invisibly at times" (_aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens_), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts--snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.
-
-It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to "close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue." Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L'Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, _pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins_, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin's
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See Appendix R.)
-
-_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man's dealings
-with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded "life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that "whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart." ["Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt." Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God's method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.
-
-In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only "at the hand of man," but also "at the hand of every
-beast;" and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that "if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher's meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.
-
-On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621, should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried "unflayed." In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (_Vide_ Appendix S.)
-
-In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (_geistlicher Convent_) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Türler's _Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern_ (_Zeitschrift für schweiz._ _Strafrecht_, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: "In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference _a bove ad hominem_.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God commanded that the
-'goring ox' should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man's
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment." The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.
-
-The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to each
-other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakôn and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikôn of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called [Greek:
-apsychôn dikai] (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted
-before the Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to
-by Æschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly
-described in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux and the _Lexicon Decem
-Oratorum Graecorum_ of Valerius Harpokration.
-
-Strictly speaking, the term [Greek: apsychon] should be applied only to an
-inanimate object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called
-[Greek: aphônon] (dumb); but this distinction was not always observed
-either in common parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point
-as formulated and expounded by Plato (_De Leg._, IX. 12) was as follows:
-"If a draught animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a
-combat authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain
-shall prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the
-public lands ([Greek: agronomoi]), as many as may be commissioned by the
-said kinsmen, shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond
-the boundaries of the country ([Greek: exorizein], exterminate in the
-literal and original sense of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive
-a person of life, provided it may not be a thunderbolt ([Greek: keraunos])
-or other missile ([Greek: belos]) hurled by a god, but an object which the
-said person may have run against or by which he may have been struck and
-slain, then the kinsman immediate to the deceased shall appoint the
-nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify himself as well as his next
-of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit ([Greek: to ophlon]) shall
-be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it were an animal."
-In the same section it is enacted that if a person be found dead and the
-murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by a herald on the
-market-place forbidding the murderer to enter any sanctuary or the land
-of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he shall be put to death
-and his body be thrown unburied beyond the boundaries of the country of
-the person killed. The object of these measures was to appease the Erinnys
-or avenging spirit of the deceased, and to avert the calamities which
-would otherwise be brought upon the land, in accordance with the strict
-law of retribution demanding blood for blood, no matter whether it may
-have been shed wilfully or accidentally. [Cf. Æschylus, _Cho._, 395, where
-this law ([Greek: nomos]) is clearly and strongly affirmed.] The same
-superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage tribes to beg
-pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and to purify
-themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an act, the
-[Greek: miasma] of murder, as the Greeks called it.
-
-Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and "amid the loud execrations of
-the masses," who seem in their excitement to have "lost their heads" as
-well as the hapless deities.
-
-When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
-
-Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his _Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae_, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer's dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year's
-incarceration in the Narrenkötterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkötterlein,
-Narrenköderl or Kotter formerly on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as "Menschenkäfige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Pöbels preiszugeben (zu
-narren)." Schläger: _Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter_, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were "by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death." It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.
-
-On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be "punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence" (_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation,
-corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning
-with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and
-ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is
-wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to "wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man." On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.
-
-A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy's approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (_peâh
-hit nafre metes ne âbîte_), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-_Schwabenspiegel_, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. ["Man soll
-allez daz tötden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre." § 290.]
-
-Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as "severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children." Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: "As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release."
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.
-
-The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, "according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country." The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.
-
-When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also "his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,"
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth "the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;" or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children's teeth were to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul's sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Blücher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.
-
-According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked "corruption of blood" in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.
-
-The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: _Schles. Chron._, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (_constitutio criminalis
-Carolina_), although in many respects an advance on mediæval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Döpler (_Theat. Poen._, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.
-
-According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the "sacra saxa," by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the _motio termini_ or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.
-
-That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.
-
-For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that "the stranger
-within their gates" is their legitimate spoil, and has no other _raison
-d'être_. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.
-
-The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. "If a horse," says Blackstone, "or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand." If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.
-
-_Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man's death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who "by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken." "And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor."
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homoepathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer's hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months' imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.
-
-In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes--_pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum_--but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lüneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (_Vide_ Kraut's _Stadtrecht
-von Lüneburg_, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)
-
-Blackstone's theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the _Commentaries_ could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were "designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death," are equally
-incorrect. In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.
-
-Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a _felo de se_ as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of "the
-mad Ajax," who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.
-
-It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.
-
-Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
-
-A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.
-
-Mediæval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: _Si duo faciunt idem non est idem_ (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner's sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade's prescription of "hempen
-caudle" and "pap of hatchet" as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.
-
-Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster's features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave's cabinet of curiosities as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.
-
-In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: "You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk." At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, "he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased."
-
-Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter's wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-_auto da fé_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
-
-Döpler cites also the case of Stephen Hübner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
-
-In 1573, the parliament of Dôle published a decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comté to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; "notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase," the people were empowered to "assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty." The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children "even on Friday." The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a _jour maigre_.
-
-Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas à Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.
-
-When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter's, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body "as a pestilential thing"
-(_uti quoddam mephiticum_) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.
-
-From the standpoint of ancient and mediæval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediæval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homoeopenal principle of _similia similibus
-puniantur_, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.
-
-Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Büchner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillée, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If "privation of mind" and "irresistible force," says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then "partial vitiation of mind" and "semi-irresistible
-force" are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. "Partial vitiation of mind" is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a "semi-irresistible force." But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-"absolute privation of mind" and "wholly irresistible force;" and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.
-
-The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.
-
-Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediæval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.
-
-But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category "all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity," and "all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired."
-In order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.
-
-A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of "moral insanity" in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as "moral
-insanity" exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.
-
-Mediæval penal justice sought to inflict the greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger's daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-"Malefiz-Gericht" or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,
-
- "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,"
-
-was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: "I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order." A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.
-
-Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called "Blue Laws" of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own "stubborn and rebellious sons," or upon persons who "worship
-any other God but the Lord God," had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.
-
-If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediæval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.
-
-A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.
-
-This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a "kind of
-menagerie"; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-"there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed." In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.
-
-Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the æsthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.
-
-It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: "Have ye a government here?" and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, "Then I'm agin' it." Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine's definition of man as "an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb," applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race, temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.
-
-The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palæolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.
-
-In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta's brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men's hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.
-
-Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the _argumentum ad hominem_ in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the "Hottentot Venus," examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.
-
-"The more advanced criminalists," says Professor Von Kirchenheim, "are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles." In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal, whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years' imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal. Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediæval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: _Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur_. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo's metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.
-
-Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-"education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts," and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to "deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (_récidivistes_) together with their posterity," and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.
-
-Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the _force majeure_
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man's character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another, ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man's
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.
-
-As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediæval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediæval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man's will upon another man's mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God's special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.
-
-One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,--some
-point at which we are forced to say,--
-
- "O, that way madness lies; let me shun that."
-
-It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.
-
-A madman, says Coleridge, is one who "mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things." But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who "of imagination all compact," takes his fancies for
-realities,
-
- "Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
- A local habitation and a name."
-
-Coleridge's definition includes also the mythopoeic faculty, the power of
-projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.
-
-An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediæval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-"an effect," says Morselli, "of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples." What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.
-
-An additional reflection, that "must give us pause" in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.
-
-Mediæval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.
-
-It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man's free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch of a deity "willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known," no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions--the original sin of the theologians--and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the "election of grace" is by no means identical with salvation
-through the "survival of the fittest." The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as "the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory," may be and probably is "as filthy rags"; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. "The best man,"
-said Socrates, "is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself." This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.
-
-Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (_Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zoöpsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of "showing off" play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls "that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob." It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.
-
-If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediæval courts against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zoöpsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.
-
-Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted _quia
-peccatum est_ or _ne peccetur_; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as "ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them." Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.
-
-The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
-
- "the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
-
-If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.
-
-Schopenhauer maintained the theory of "responsibility for character," and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person's character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-"dives" haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.
-
-A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the _causes célèbres_ of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in _The Nation_ for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel _Le Comte de Monte Christo_, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.
-
-In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in "_l'espèce de volupté qu'elle
-éprouverait à commettre un crime_," or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called "pure cussedness." Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.
-
-Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours' deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances," as the
-result of which the accused was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.
-
-After fifteen years' imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer's ethics, that "a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character," what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal's individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.
-
-There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological material
-which her profession placed in her hands?
-
-However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as "much delight" as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals "shrieking and
-groaning" on his tormentatore. "The physiologist," says Claude Bernard,
-"is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover." Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.
-
-The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that "there's
-method in it," is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.
-
-According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has "such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong." This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no "defect of reason" nor "disease of mind" in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater "defect of reason" in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-"certifiably insane" persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.
-
-It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-_Salus socialis suprema lex esto._ Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.
-
-The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.
-
-If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the partially
-insane, especially those affected with "moral insanity" or so-called
-"cranks," have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.
-
-From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso's assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani
-matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.
-
-That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-_cujus poenæ metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in
-riding from Cologne towards Düren, he and his companions saw in the vast
-forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves,
-as a warning to the rest of the pack: "Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram
-versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non
-secus quam duos latrones, furcæ suspensos; _quo similis poenæ formidine a
-maleficio reliqui deterreantur_." In like manner the American farmer sets
-up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add
-that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral
-character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority
-to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and
-original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta sæpe ratione utantur melius
-homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naudé at Paris in 1648; an
-enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a
-dissertation on the soul in animals.
-
-In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the
-Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiène de l'esprit_, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe's
-_Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Frères_, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurélien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military _attaché_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles' department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysées, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-_Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le
-Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang's story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.
-
-That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.
-
-The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender's mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediæval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
-
-
-A
-
-TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM
-
-Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO
-
-Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente _Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio_ signatum _Franciscus Faeti_ contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (_sic_) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata _Romaneti_ qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI EPISCOPATUS MAURIANÆ
-
-Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani cæterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et cætera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinæ potentiæ virtute præcibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinæ
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.
-
-Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum præcedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-cæterasque formalitates ad hæc opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinæ clementiæ et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.
-
- FRAN. FAETI
-
-Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R{di} generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.
-
- ROMANET
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.
-
-Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (_sic_) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... _Deus
-Deus qui contritorum_ et _A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis_ etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis _Qui
-contritorum_ et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-_Veni Creator Spiritus_ quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto _Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur_ etc. cum orationibus _Deus qui corda
-fidelium_ singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Vic.{s} et Off.{s} gen.{lis} Maurianne.
-
- FAURE
-
-Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.
-
-(_locus sigilli._)
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam _Rembaud_ producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-_Approbando_ etc. signatam _Rembaud_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULE
-
-Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam _Claudius Morellus_
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quæ impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciæ _cap. primo_ et ibi Gr. _De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib._ 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram_
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi _Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo_ quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturæ primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturæ vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus _actus activorum non operantur in patienti_ ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia § _Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili._ ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturæ dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi _Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium_ non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et æquitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur _Qui seminat metet_ ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. _In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum_ non tamen cequitur (_sic_) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quæ sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et poenitentiam agat exemplo
-Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter poenitentiam
-egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3. veniat populus et
-imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua sancta gratia et
-per merita sanctissimæ passionis excessum dictorum Animalium compessere
-et refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e vineis ejicient et non
-eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis consideratis evidentissime patet
-dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis ejicienda non esse attento quod solo
-instinctu naturæ vivunt et ita per egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem
-Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum
-monitorium requisitum in quantum concernit dicta Animalia revocari et
-annullari nec aliquo modo consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis
-concedatur nec etiam aliqui visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per
-Agentes in eorum supplicatione protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni
-meliori modo via jure ac forma salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac
-deffentionibus competentibus aut competituris humiliter implorato benigno
-officio judicis.
-
- PETRUS REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem _Etiam si cuncta_ et signatam
-_Franciscus Fay_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.
-
-Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulæ cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam _Fay_ dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in I.
-par. q. 26. ar. I. et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut coeteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in
-æquitate et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum
-creaturarum habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa
-bruta animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.
-
-Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.
-
- FRANC FAETI
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem _Licet multis_
-signatam _Rembaudi_ dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut cæteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et præsertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturæ
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (_sic_) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. I. dist. I. at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata _Fran: Faeti._ nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulæ parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: _P. Rembaudus._ ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suoe cedule et fieri recuisitis inhoerendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.
-
- P. REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum _Prunier_ adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiæ vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariæ et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.
-
-Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN
-
-Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.
-
-Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Françys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au conseil general suyvant la publication d'icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu'il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantité a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.
-
- L. PRUMIER
- _curial_
-
-MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-ALIA CONTINUATIO
-
-Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE AD JUS
-
-Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA
-
-_contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis
-Supplicata_
-
-Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori--cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente _Ut appareat_
-etc. signata _Claudius Morellus_--tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium--tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati _Daprilis_--ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni--testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis _Daprili_--cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente _Visitatio_ et signata _Claudius
-Morellus_--allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente _Etsi
-rationes_ etc. signata _Petrus de Collo_--tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis--memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587--ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis--supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata _Franciscus Faeti_--litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis--attestatione signata
-_Romanet_ sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii--cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente _Approbando_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata _Franciscus
-Faeti_ incipiente _Etiam si cuncta_ etc.--allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente _Licet multis_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi--testimonialibus signatis _Prunier_ sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium--memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi--ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.
-
-Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum
-super statu
-
- loci oblati p....
- quem locum....
- visitandum....
- mensem ut f....
- et nobis rem....
- fuerit provid....
- Mermetus vis....
- generalis....
- in civitate S....
- die decima....
- anno domini....
- octuagesimo sep....
- Petremandi Bertr....
- dictorum Scind....
- et egregii....
- dictorum Animal.
- ordinationem....
- acceptandum....
- facit die et....
-
-(pro visitatione III flor)
-
-_locus sigilli._
-
-Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.
-
-Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor--20 decembre 1587.
-
-Published by Léon Ménebréa in the appendix to his treatise: _De l'Origine,
-de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-âge contre les
-Animaux_, Chambery, 1846. Cf. _Mémoires de la Société Royale Académique de
-Savoie_, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.
-
- * * * * *
-
-According to M. J. Desnoyers (_Recherches sur la coutume d'exorciser et
-d'excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles à l'agriculture_,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.
-
-The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d'Eynatten, in
-his _Manuale Exorcismorum_, is as follows:--"Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem [+], et per Jesum Christum
-[+] filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum [+] ab utroque
-procedentem, ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis,
-aquis, si Dei providentia adhùc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis
-habitetis, sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis
-nocere poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhùc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.--Amen." _Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae_, 1626, p. 1204.
-
-
-B
-
-II[4]
-
-DE L'EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES
-
-PAR GASPARD BAILLY
-
-Il ne favt pas mépriser les Monitoires, veu que c'est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l'Eglise se sert, qui est l'Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n'épargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s'attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont fréquens,
-pour preuue de cette verité. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu'on a
-excommunié les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeïssans aux commandemens de l'Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonné par la sentence de l'Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur procès. Au Siecle passé, il y auoit telle quantité
-d'Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu'elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent à l'Euesque pour
-les Excommunier, ce qu'ayant esté fait, le Lac fut deliuré de ces
-animaux.
-
-Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantité de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu'elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantoüan, si on n'y eût apporté du secours par
-l'Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblémes, sous
-l'intitulation _nihil reliqui_.
-
- _Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,
- Locustæ vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.
- Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;
- Qualia non Athilæ, Castrave Cersis erant.
- Hæ fænum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;
- Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super._
-
-On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu'il se leua vne si grande quantité
-de Mouches, d'vne Eglise qu'on auoit basti à Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu'elles faisoient, elles empéchoient à ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu'elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paué de l'Eglise.
-
-Nous lisons qu'en l'année 1541, il y eut vne telle quantité de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d'vne nuëé; qu'ayant mangé les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d'vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l'Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.
-
-On dit aussi qu'en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantité de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu'ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d'vne coudée d'auteur, et tellement épaisses qu'en volant
-elles leuoient la veüe de la clarté du Soleil, ces animaux firent un
-dégat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chassés par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.
-
-Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cité de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu'en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantité de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu'ayans mangé tous les fruits, feüiles, et écorces des arbres iusques à
-la racine, elles s'éleuerent comme vne nuëe; et tombées en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu'en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.
-
-Du temps de Lotaire troisième Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, blé, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans esté jettés à la Mer; il s'ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l'Air, que la peste rauageât grande quantité de monde en ce pays là. Voilà
-quantité d'exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur procés
-afin de s'en garantir par le moyen de la malédiction que leur donne
-l'Eglise.
-
-Premièrement, sur la Requeste presentée par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le dégat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportée, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur à ses bestioles pour se présenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et là deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, où
-elles estoient, et les raisons veuës et considerées, d'vne part et d'autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.
-
-_Requeste des Habitans_
-
-Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantité
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-blés, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel dégat aux blés,
-et raisins qu'ils n'y laissent rien, d'où les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommée par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.
-
-Qui les fait recourir à la Bonté, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, à ce
-qu'il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu'il a pleu à Dieu d'enuoyer pour l'entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.
-
-_Plaidoyer des Habitans_
-
-Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont à genouy les larmes à l'oeil,
-recourent à votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aués des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessité de laquelle ils
-sont menacés, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n'épargnent ny
-blé, ny vignes; rauage semblable à celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoyé par Themis à Thebes, qui n'épargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous sçauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aués trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint à s'abandonner à des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, _nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla æequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus_: Témoins les Meres
-dont il est parlé au quatrième des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l'une de l'autre. _Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur._ La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu'elle est pleine
-de langueurs, débilités et foiblesses de coeur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.
-
- _Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,
- At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longè est._
-
-Et Auian Marcellin dit, _Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire_. Ie crois que vous aurés compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l'estat qu'il serait reduit si la faim
-l'accabloit.
-
- _Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,
- Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.
- Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.
- Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;
- Ventus erat, pro ventre locus._
-
-Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d'habits dechirés, et des visages affamés, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitié et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iousë, et en cét estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.
-
-Les Informations et visites qui ont esté faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du dégat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalités requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d'adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de fairé reflection, et à cét effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnées en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnées par nostre Mere Sainte
-l'Eglise, à quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.
-
-_Plaidoyer pour les Insectes_
-
-Messievrs, dépuis que vous m'aués choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalités, qu'on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m'étonnant fort
-de la façon qu'on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du dégat qu'on
-pretend qu'elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on sçait qu'elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer à ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu'elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberté de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.
-
-Qve l'adiovrnement laxé contr'elles est nul comme laxé contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu'on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans priués
-de cette lumiere qui a esté donnée au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tiré de la
-Loi premieree, _ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat_; et voyci les
-mots. _Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret._
-
-La seconde raison est, que l'on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu'vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portée sous le tiltre des instituts _de poen. tem.
-litig._ Mais ces animaux ne sont obligés par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-façon, _non tenentur enim ex contractu_, estans incapables de contracter,
-_neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto_, moins
-_ex delicto, seu quasi_; parce que comme il a esté dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priués de son vsage.
-
-De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal à propos, _Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Je
-laisse à penser quest-ce qu'on pretend de faire ayant adjourné ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuées de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l'adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister _cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quæ
-consequuntur locum habent_.
-
-On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict, et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu'il est vray lors qu'il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, _In administratione suæ
-iurisdictionis_, mais non pas en ce cas, où la partie n'en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est décidé par la glose
-de la Loy 2 _ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent_, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite à propos L'axiaume qui dit _quod directè fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus_. Mais ce que je treuue plus
-estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d'Excommunication, d'Anathema et malediction, et à quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l'Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne châtie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peché, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d'auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu'il faut suiure, et ce qu'il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberté de prendre l'vn et laisser l'autre.
-
-On vovdra peut-estre dire qu'elles ont manqué en ce qu'elles ne se sont
-presentées ayant esté adjurnées, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-à cause de leur desobeïssance: Mais à cela on respond qu'il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n'y a point d'adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-_quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitimè citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo_, etc.
-
-De plus, si on prend garde à la définition de l'Excommunication, on verra
-qu'on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l'Excommunication est dite _extra Ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet
-communione, vel è quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechassés de l'Eglise, n'y ayans jamais esté,
-d'autant qu'elle est pour les hommes qui ont l'ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doüées d'aucune raison, et l'Apostre S. Paul
-_ad Corinth._ 5 dit _quòd de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus_, l'Excommunication
-_afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est_, cap. 1, _de sentent. Excomm. in 6._ C'est pourquoy l'ame de ces
-animaux, n'estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchée par telle
-Sentence, _quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis_.
-
-L'autre raison est, _quòd facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licét consecutiuum sit repugnans statui_ suo cap. _de
-occidendis_ 23 q. 5 cap. _sicut dignum extra de homicid_. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-_fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum_. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont esté faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d'en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Cicéron dit
-au premier des Offices _principio generi omnium animantium est à natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant_. Par ces raison on voit qu'ils n'ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, _cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quòd secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minùs erit licitum homini_, veu qu'on lit dans l'Epistre de S. Iude, _cum
-altercaretur Michaël cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere_ Cap. _Si igitur Michaël_, 23. _q._ 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. _q._ 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s'est peché de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considérans en eux mesmes, _est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum_.
-
-Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous féra
-donner les mains, et persuadera à vostre Esprit, qu'on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d'Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononçant telle Sentence s'est s'en pendre à Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs péchés, _immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant_, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge _omnis Caro corrupit viam suam_. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissée, exilée, et
-reduite en tel estat qu'elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.
-
- _Protinus irrupit venæ prioris in æuum,
- Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verùmque fidésque,
- In quorum subiere locum, fraudésque, dolùsque.
- Insidiæque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,
- Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,
- Non socer à genero, fratrum quoquè gratia rara est,
- Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti
- Liuida terribiles miscent aconitæ nouercæ
- Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,
- Uita iacet pietas, et virgo cæde madentes.
- Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit._
-
-Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Procès, à quoy on
-conclud.
-
-_Replique des Habitans_
-
-Le principal motif qu'on a rapporté pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu'estans priués de l'vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis à aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre _cum mulier_ 1. 5. q. l. la _l. congruit
-in fin_. et la Loix suiuante. _ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis._ Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se présente maintenant à juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d'vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d'empescher
-qu'ils n'en commettent par cy-après, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-à vn crime commis, et permis afin d'empescher _ne crimen committatur_.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy _congruit_ sus cité, où il est dit qu'on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insensé du crime qu'il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu'il ne scait ce qu'il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu'il n'offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cét Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l'authorité du Chapitre _omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss._ ou il est dit qu'on peut
-deceller ce qu'on a pris si on ne la pas executé, afin d'y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmée par la glose _in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal._ qui dit qui si quelqu'vn s'accuse d'auoir Fiancé une fille,
-par parolles de présent; on pourra deceller ce qui a esté dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu'ayant espousé telle fille, si on nie
-de l'auoir fait, et on refuse d'accomplir le Mariage, _Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur_. Il este loisible de publier ce qu'on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu'on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l'adjournement est valable, d'autant qu'il est fait
-afin qu'ils ne rapportent du dommage d'ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu'ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre à ce
-qu'on a aduancé à sçauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommuniés,
-Anathematisés, maudis ny execrés; à cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donné à l'Eglise, l'ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l'Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, _omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quæ
-mouentur in aquis_, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s'il y a chose où elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c'est à la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; à sçauoir de l'Homme,
-qu'il a fait à son Image et semblance, _faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram_ et luy a donné le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crées _crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus coeli, et omnibus animantibus Coeli_; Aussi Pline en son Liure
-premier de l'Histoire naturelle dit _quod causâ hominis, videtur cuncta
-alia genuisse natura_. Les Jurisconsultes sont d'accord, _quod hominis
-gratia, omnes fructus à natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de vsur. et
-§. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis._ et Ouide descriuant
-l'excellence de l'Homme parle de la sorte,
-
- _Pronaque, cum spectent animalia cæetera terras
- Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri
- Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
-
-et vn autre Poëte,
-
- _Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus
- Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.
- Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,
- Segnem, atque obscænam, passuri strauisset in aluum._
-
-Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l'Homme dit _hominem tantoe excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimodè, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo verò, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quàm in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aër, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturoe suoe, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos videmus,
-hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc Terra, et
-Elementa, huic bruta præesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat cælum, hinc
-salutem bonumque procurant Angelicoe mentes_.
-
-Et se seroit vne chose, si j'ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priué, et que de chétifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, à l'exclusion de l'Homme pour qui ils sont
-destinés de Dieu. C'est sur ce sujet qu'il dit _Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodò posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea_.
-
-Et pour responce à ce qu'escrit S. Thomas qu'il n'est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu'en l'espece
-qu'on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et détruisans les fruits qui
-seruent à son soutient, et nourriture.
-
-Mais à quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu'on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantité de saints Personnages, ont Excommunié des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d'en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons continuellement, à
-sçauoir dans la ville d'Aix, où S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantité à cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d'Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu'vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arresté, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu'vn est piqué hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu'on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse à part quantité de passages de l'Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donné des maledictions aux choses inanimées, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu'on pourra voir au _Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2._ il maudit le Serpent _Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terræ_.
-
-De dire, qu'excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s'est s'en prendre
-à Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n'est pas s'ens prendre à Dieu que de recourir à l'Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu'il a pleu à sa Diuine Majesté de
-nous enuoyer, à cause de nos fautes et pechés; au contraire c'est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir à elle, lors q'on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.
-
-_Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal_
-
-Les defenses rapportées par l'Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu'on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d'Excommunication à la volée, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si
-agissant, que s'il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cét Aduocat est appuyé sur la règle de
-Droict, qui dit, _qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, poenam non meretur_, et
-vrayement c'est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d'impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines à l'égal des offences, sans auoir égard à personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, _quàm abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viæ ejus_. C'est vne Mer profonde d'ont on ne peut
-découurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoyé ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient à leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.
-
-Ceux qui donnent l'aumosne sont toûjours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit _non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri_, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l'aumône aux pauures, _si non pauisti necasti, pascendò seruare
-poteras_, de mesmes la Loy _de lib. agnoscend._ repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens à ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinée à ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, _qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vità viuet_; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusèbe expliche de la sorte, _fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium_.
-
-C'est vn acte de Charité, que d'assister le pauures, _frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri_, dit Iosuë c. 38. aussi la
-récompense est asseurée, ainsi qu'escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. _venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum à constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis_.
-C'est vne oeuure de Misericorde d'auuoir compassion de son prochain, ainsi
-que dit S. Ambroise _lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiæ, vt
-compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum possumus
-iuvemus, et plus interdum quàm possumus_ l'Hospitalité est recommandée par
-S. Paul _hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim placuerunt quidam,
-Angelis hospitio receptis_, et S. Augustin _disce Christiane sine
-discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne fortè cui domum clauseris, cui
-humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus_. L'ordinaire recompence qui suit
-l'aumosne est le centuple, _honora Dominum de tua substantia, et de
-primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et implebuntur horrea
-tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt_. Les abismes de la
-Diuinité ne s'épuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage Salomon, _fæneratur
-Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam reddet_. S. Paul aux
-Corinthièns Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, _qui administrat semen seminanti,
-et panem ad manducandum præstabit, et multiplicabit semen suum_.
-
-Seroit-ce point à cause des irreuerences qu'on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun égard à la presence de Dieu, _conduntur
-stupra, tractantur lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentiùs deniquè;
-in ædituorum cellulis quòd in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur_, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c'est là bien souuent où se
-donne le mot, où se prennent les assignations, où se lancent les
-meschantes oeilliades, _Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius_,
-dit S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en Ægypte,
-le péché était consacré à Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu'on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peché ressemble au coeur, et
-la feuille à la langue, inférant de là que ceux qui allaient aux Temples,
-deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.
-
-Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu'on assistât au culte Diuin par maniere
-d'aquit: Mais qu'en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entièrement sa
-pensée, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d'actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu'on entendit parmy les
-Ruës aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l'on se tue,
-laissant toute autre oeuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.
-
-Que si les Payens ont esté si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinités, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.
-
-Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n'y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s'il enuoit quelques aduersités aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouët: C'est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent détourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et pechés.
-
-Nous voyons ces habitans la larme à l'oeil, qui demandent pardon d'vn
-coeur contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le
-passé, et employent l'assistance de l'Eglise pour les soulager en leurs
-nécessités, et détourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans
-menacés d'vne famine insuportable si vous ne prenés leur droit, et cause
-en protection, et faire déloger ces animaux, qui les menaçent d'vne ruine
-totale, à quoy nous n'empeschons.
-
-Concluans à cét effect, qu'il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d'execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d'ores en auant ils n'apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, à ce conuenables et accoustumées.
-
-_La Sentence du Iuge d'Eglise_
-
-In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci à certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, à territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visâ certâ informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.
-
-Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordiâ, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.
-
-In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub poenis
-Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infrà sex dies, à Monitione in
-vim sententiae huius, à vineis, et territoriis huius loci discedant,
-nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod si infrà
-praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districtè praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradûs, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt faciliùs ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenùs bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulò abstineant.
-
-
-C
-
-Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.
-
-KLAG
-
-Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmäuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schädliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schädliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben könnten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wüssten zu
-ernehren.
-
-ANTWORT
-
-Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-männiglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewöhr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei----: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewöhr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen müssten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten mögen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-wäre, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fürbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen möge.
-
-URTEL
-
-Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was für Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schädlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmäuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmäder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger wär, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen möchte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen mögen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte_. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.
-
-
-D
-
-Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.
-
-Du vnvernünfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernüfftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ sömlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshäch/ so hat mir mein gnädiger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erlösers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. nächsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gärten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Bäumen/ Krüteren/ vnd von allen örteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd stätteuch fügend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen mögen an den früchten vnd nahrungen der Menschen vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfüllen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fürsprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnädigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnädiger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fürer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verflüchen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebürt/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begären von ewerem jeglichen zu
-bätten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerüffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.
-
-Job. Heinrich Hottinger: _Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti_ iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling's _Chronica_, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.
-
-
-E
-
-Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.
-
-Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfürst.--Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-würdige, Unser lieber andächtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner nächst getanen Predigt, über die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhörlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und ärgerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und männiglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.
-
-Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhörer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevögel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,--dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden möge nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil--ist demnach unser gnädiges Begehren--zu eröffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behändigkeit und Wege, du für gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-tägliche und unaufhörliche Unkeuschheit unzählich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-ärgerliche Vöglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkümmert werden möge.... Das gereicht zur Beförderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnädige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.--Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch, etc._, 1845, pp. 227-8.
-
-
-F
-
-Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.[5]
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Sources of Information | Dates | Animals | Places
- ----------------------------+-------+-------------+---------------------
- Annales Ecclesiastici | 824 |Moles |Valley of Aosta
- Francorum | | |
- | | |
- Muratori: Rer. Ital. | 886 |Locusts |Roman Campagna
- Scriptores, iii | | |
- | | |
- Gaspard Bailly: | 9th |Serpents |Aix-les-Bains
- Traité des Monitoires | cent. | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, | 1120 |Field-mice |Laon
- p. 97, Mémoires de la | |and |
- Société Royale des | |Caterpillars |
- Antiquaires de France, | | |
- viii, p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 1121 |Flies |Foigny near Laon
- Monitoriis in Opusc. | | |
- missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 415. Note, Vita S. | | |
- Bernhardi, i, No. 58. | 1121 |Horseflies |Mayence
- Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272| | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1225 |Eels |Lausanne
- | | |
- L'Abbé Leboeuf: Hist. de | 1266 |Pig |Fontenay-aux-Roses
- Paris, ix, p. 400. | | | near Paris
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres | 1314 |Bull |Moiey-le-Temple
- Thémis, viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1320 |Cockchafers |Avignon
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1322 | |Not Specified
- _vide_ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1323 | |Abbeville
- Both cited by Von Amira, | | |
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | 1338 | |Kaltern
- Kulturgeschichte, ii, p. | | |
- 544; also Germania, iv, | | |
- p. 383. Von Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Delisle: Etudes sur la | 1356 |Pig |Caen
- condition de la classe | | |
- agricole, p. 107. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange. | 1378 | |Abbeville
- _Vide_ homicida. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1379 |Three sows |Saint-Marcel
- Savantes, Dec. 1866, pp. | |and a pig. | les-Jussey
- 476, _sqq._ From the | |Rest of the |
- archives of Côte-d'Or | |two herds |
- | | pardoned |
- | | |
- Charange: Dict. des Titres | 1386 |Sow |Falaise
- Originaux, ii, p. 72. | | |
- _Also_ statistique de | | |
- Falaise, i, p. 63. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1389 |Horse |Dijon
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1394 |Pig |Mortaing
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 427. From MSS. in la | | |
- Bibliothèque du Roi | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 14th |Spanish flies|Mayence
- Tract. ii, Mémoires, | cent. | |
- cit., viii, p. 411 | | |
- | | |
- MS. of Judge Hérisson, | 1403 |Sow |Meulan
- published by Lejeune in | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 433; _also_ Loriol: | | |
- La France Eure et Loire, | | |
- p. 108 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1404 |Pig |Rouvre
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1405 |Ox |Gisors
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1408 |Pig |Pont-de-l'Arche
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- Louandre: Histoire | 1414 | " |Abbeville
- d'Abbeville | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1418 | " | "
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1419 | " |Labergement-le-Duc
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1420 | " |Brochon
- | | |
- " " " | 1435 | " |Trochères
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 1451 |Rats and |Berne
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | Bloodsuckers|
- p. 423 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1452 |Sixteen cows |Rouvre
- Savantes, iv, p. 476 | | and one goat|
- _sqq._ Dec. 1866 | | |
- | | |
- Gui-Pape: Decisiones | 1456 |Pig |Bourgogne
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, pp. | 1457 |Sow |Savigny-sur-Etang,
- 441-445. From Archives of | | | Bourgogne
- Monjeu and Dependencies | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches etc. | 1460-1|Weevils |Dijon
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Justice et | 1463 |Two pigs |Amiens
- Bourreau à Amiens | | |
- | | |
- Sauval: Histoire de Paris, | 1466 |Sow |Corbeil
- iii, p. 387. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris| 1470 |Mare |Amiens
- | | |
- Promenades pittoresques dans| 1474 |Cock |Bâle
- l'Evêché de Bâle. Journal | | |
- du Départment du Nord, | | |
- Nov. 1, 1813. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428. Johann| | |
- Gross: Kleine Baseler | | |
- Chronik. | | |
- | | |
- Schilling: Chronica (Zurich | 1478 |Inger (sort |Berne
- MS.), Hottinger: Hist. | | of weevil) |
- Eccles. Pars iv, pp. | | |
- 317-321 | | |
- | | |
- Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du |1479[6]|Inger | "
- Pays de Vaud | | |
- | | |
- Hist. de Nismes. Mémoires, | 1479 |Rats and |Nîmes
- cit., viii, p. 428. | | Moles |
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1479 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia von | 1481 |Caterpillars |Macon
- Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Victor Hugo: Nôtre Dame de | 1482 |Goat |Paris
- Paris | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | 1487 |Snails |Macon
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 416 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 | " |Autun
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 |Weevils |Beaujeu
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1490 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812, | 1494 |Pig |Clermont-les-Moncornet
- p. 88. Mémoires, cit., | | | near Laon
- viii, p. 428, 446 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la | 1497 |Sow |Charonne
- Penalité, sub verb. | | |
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Voyage Littéraire de deux | 1499 |Bull |Beauvais
- Bénédictins (Durand et | | |
- Martenne), 1717, ii, | | |
- p. 166-7 | | |
- | | |
- Archives de l'Abbaye de | 1499 |Pig |Sèves near Chartres
- Josaphat. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 434-5 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | 15th |Sow |Dunois
- 434 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | " |Caterpillars |Coire
- | | |
- " " " | " |Worms |Constance
- | | |
- " " " | " |Beetles |Coire
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Épopée des | 1500 |Flies |Mayence
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500 |Snails |Lyon
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500- |Vermin |Autun
- | 1530 | (Rats, etc.)|
- | | |
- Mémoires et Documents, publ.| 1509 |Vermin |Lausanne
- par la Soc. de la Suisse | | |
- Romande, vii, No. 97, pp. | | |
- 675-677 | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or | 1510 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or. | 1512 | " |Arcenaux
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 447 | | |
- | | |
- Mathieu: Hist. des Évêques |1512-13|Rats and |Langres
- de Langres, p. 188 | | Insects |
- | | |
- Groslée: Ephémérides, 1811, | 1516 |Weevils |Troyes in Champagne
- ii, p. 153, 168. _Cf._ |(1506 | |
- Théophile Raynaud: Opusc, | according |
- 1665, p. 482. Mémoires, | to some |
- cit., viii, p. 413, 418, | authorities) |
- 424 | | |
- | | |
- Habasque: Not. hist. sur le | 1516 |Locusts |Tréguier
- Litoral des Côtes-du-Nord,| | |
- p. 89 | | |
- | | |
- Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, | 1519 |Field-mice |Glurns (Stelvio)
- pp. 946-48 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la |1522[7]|Rats |Autun
- Penalité. _Cf._ Chasseneus| | |
- | | |
- Vernet in Thémis ou | 1525 |Dog |Parliament of
- Bibliothèque des | | | Toulouse
- Jurisconsulte, viii | | |
- | | |
- Papon and Boesius: | 1528 |Not specified|Parliament of
- Decisiones. _Cf._ Thémis, | | | Bordeaux
- viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1528 | " | " "
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1536 |Weevils |Lutry (on Lake
- contre les Animaux, p. | | | Leman)
- 505. From Grenier: | | |
- Documents relatifs à | | |
- l'hist. du pays de Vaud. | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1540 |Bitch |Meaux
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or | 1540 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1541 |She-Ass |Loudun
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Bailly: Traité des | 1541 |Grasshoppers |Lombardy
- Monitoires, ii | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1541 |Vermin |Lausanne
- | |(worms, rats,|
- | |bloodsuckers)|
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1543 |Snails and |Grenoble
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | Locusts |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1545 |Weevils |St. Jean de
- contre les Animaux, pp. | and | | Maurienne
- 544, 545, 556. De Actis | 1546 | |
- Scindicorum com. St. | | |
- Jul., etc. | | |
- | | |
- Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, | 1546 |Cow |Parliament of
- iii, p. 28, Registres | | | Paris
- manuscrits de la | | |
- Tournelle. _Cf._ Mémoires,| | |
- cit., viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1550 | " | " "
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1551 |Goat |Ile de Rhé
- | | |
- " " " | 1554 |Sheep (ewe) |Beaugé
- | | |
- Aldrovande: De Insectis, | 1554 |Bloodsuckers |Lausanne
- 1602, lib. vii, 724. | | |
- Mémoires, cit. viii, | | |
- p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyer, cited in Revue des| 1554 |Insects |Langres
- questions historiques, v, | | |
- p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567| | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1556 |She-Ass |Sens
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de | 1557 |Pig |Saint-Quintin
- Saint-Quintin, p. 143. | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | | |
- animaux, etc., p. 9 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1560 |She-Ass |Loigny near
- manuscrit | | | Châteaudun
- | | |
- " " " | 1561 |Cow |Augoudessus in
- | | | Picardy
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del | 1562 |Weevils |Argenteuil
- Vino. Regist. Epir. Par. | | |
- for May 8 | | |
- | | |
- Ranchin on Gui. Pape | 1565 |Mule |Montpellier
- Quaest., 74. Thémis, i, | | |
- p. 196. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1565 |Not specified|Parliament of
- viii | | | Toulouse
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopée des | 1566 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- Animaux | | | Paris
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1567 |Sow |Senlis
- Nationale of Paris | | |
- | | |
- Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, | 1572 |Pig |Moyen-Montier,
- 1811, ii, p. 374 | | | near Nancy
- | | |
- Lersner: Chronica, 1706, | 1574 | " |Frankfort-on-the-Main
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones Thémis, | 1575 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- viii | | | Paris
- | | |
- Haus-Chronik von | 1576 |Pig |Schweinfurt
- Schweinfurt, in | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | | |
- Kulturgeschichte, i, 156 | | |
- | | |
- Cannaert: Bydragen tot de | 1578 |Pig(?) |Ghent
- Kennis van het oude | | |
- strafrecht in Vlandern, | | |
- 1835, p. vii | | |
- | | |
- Derheims: Hist. de | 1585 |Pig |Saint-Omer
- Saint-Omer, p. 327 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist. du Dauphiné. | " |Locusts |Valence
- _Cf._ Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1587 |Weevils |St. Jean-de-Maurienne
- contre les animaux, etc., | | |
- pp. 546, 549 | | |
- | | |
- Fornery and Laincel | 1596 |Dolphins |Marseilles
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 16th |Weevils and |Cotentin
- Monitoriis, p. 482. | cent. | Grasshoppers|
- Mémoires, cit., viii, |(first | |
- p. 429 | half) | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | " |Snails |Lyons
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 415 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Weevils |Mâcon
- | | |
- " " " | " |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Épopée des | " |Dog |Scotland
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Duboys: Hist. du Droit | 16th |Weevils |Angers
- Crim. de la France | cent. | |
- | second| |
- | half | |
- | | |
- Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor | " |Rats |Spain
- Navarrus: Consilia seu | | |
- Responsa, 1602, ii, p. | | |
- 812. Mémoires, cit., viii,| | |
- p. 419. Théoph. Raynaud, | | |
- cit., p. 482 | | |
- | | |
- Francesco Vivio: Decisiones,| 16th |Divers |Aquila in Italy
- No. 68. Cited by | cent. | animals |
- D'Addosio: Bestie Delinq.,| second| |
- p. 125 | half | |
- | | |
- Archives of Obwalden | " |Gadflies |Aargau
- | | |
- Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. | " |Locusts |Naples
- _Cf._ D'Addosio, cit., | | |
- p. 115. | | |
- | | |
- Sardagna: L'uomo e le | " |Horse |Portugal
- Bestie. Cited by D'Addosio| | |
- | | |
- Mornacius to Du Cange, | 1600 | |Beauvais
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Cow |Thouars
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Abbeville
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, | " |Weevils |Vercelli
- 1890, p. 141 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1601 |Dog |Brie
- viii. Lerouge: Reg. | | |
- secret manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Provins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Recueil d'Arrets | 1601 |Not |Parliament of
- | | specified | Paris
- | | |
- Charma: Leçons de | 1604 |Ass |Parliament of
- Philosophie | | | Paris
- | | |
- Guerra: Diurnali | " | " |Naples
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Joinville
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1606 |Sheep |Riom
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |Châteaurenaud
- | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Mare |Coiffy near Langres
- | | |
- | | |
- Lejeune: Mémoires, cit., | " |Bitch |Chartres
- viii, p. 418 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1607 |Mare |Boursant near
- manuscrit | | | d'Epernay
- | | |
- " " " | 1609 | " |Montmorency
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Niederrad
- | | |
- Voltaire: Siècle de Louis | " |Cow |Parliament of
- XIV, ch. i. Louandre: | | | Paris
- Rev. des deux Mondes, | | |
- 1854, i, p. 334 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1610 |Horse |Paris
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1611 |Goat |Laval
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |St. Fergeux
- | | | near Rethel
- | | |
- " " " | 1613 |Sow |Montoiron near
- | | | Chatelleraut
- | | |
- " " " | 1614 |She-Ass |Le Mans
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, etc.,| 1616 |Rats and |Langres
- p. 13 | | insects |
- | | |
- Anzeige für Kunde der | 1621 |Cow |Machern near
- deutschen Vorzeit, 1880, | | | Leipsic
- col. 102 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1621 |Mare |La Rochelle
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1622 | " |Montpensier
- | | |
- " " " | 1623 |She-Ass |Bessay near Moulins
- | | |
- " " " | 1624 |Mule |Chefboutonne (Poitou)
- | | |
- Döpler: Theat. pen., ii, | 1631 |Mares and |Greifenberg
- p. 574 | | Cows |
- | | |
- Marchisio Michele: Gatte | 1633 |Weevils |Strambino
- ed. insetti nocivi, 1834, | | | (Ivrea)
- p. 63 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Bellac
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1641 |Pig |Viroflay
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1647 |Mare |Parliament of
- manuscrit | | | Paris
- | | |
- " " " | 1650 | " |Fresnay near Chartres
- | | |
- Crollolanza: Storia del | 1659 |Caterpillars |Chiavenna
- Contado di Chiavenna, | | |
- p. 455 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gazzetta | 1661 |Weevils |Turin
- Litteraria di Torino, | | |
- Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Cotton Mather: Magnalia | 1662 |Cow, two |New Haven, Conn.
- Christi Americana, Book | | Heifers, |
- vi. London, 1702 | | three Sheep,|
- | | and two Sows|
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1666 |Mare |Tours
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |St. P. Lemontiers
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1667 |She-Ass |Vaudes near
- manuscrit | | | Bar-sur-Seine
- | | |
- " " " | 1668 |Mare |Angers
- | | |
- Annales scientifiques de | 1670 |Locusts |Clermont
- l'Auvergne, Vol. vii, | | |
- p. 391 | | |
- | | |
- Döpler: Theatrum pen., ii, | 1676 |Mare and Cow |Silesia
- p. 5 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1678 | " |Beaugé
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di | " |Weevils |Turin
- Torius, Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones, i, | 1679 |Mare |Parliament
- p. 914. Mémoires, cit., | | | d'Aix
- viii, p. 431. Boniface: | | |
- Traité des matières | | |
- criminelles, 1785, p. 31 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist du Dauphiné. | Before|Worms |Constance
- Thémis, viii | 1680 | | and Coire
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1680 |Mare |Fourches near
- manuscrit | | | Provins
- | | |
- Heinrich Roch: Schlesische | 1681 |Mare |Wünschelburg
- Chronik, p. 342. Döpler: | | | in Silesia
- Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 | | |
- _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1684 |Mare |Ottendorf
- | | |
- " " " | 1685 | " |Striga
- | | |
- Dulaure: Description des | 1690 |Locusts |Pont-de-Château
- principaux lieux de la | | | in Auvergne
- France, 1789, v, p. 493 | | |
- _sqq._ Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 412 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1692 |Mare |Moulins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi,| End of|Turtledoves |Canada
- p. 79. Mémoires, cit., | 17th | |
- viii, p. 431 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Meiners: Vergleichung des | " |He-Goat |Russia
- ältern u, neuern | | banished |
- Russlands, p. 291. | | to Siberia |
- _Cf._ Amira, p. 573 | | |
- | | |
- Registres de la Paroise de | 1710 |Rats |Grignon
- Grignon | | |
- | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | 1710 |Vermin |Autun
- animaux, etc., p. 23 | | |
- | | |
- Rinds Herreds Krönike and | 1711 | " |Als in Jutland
- other sources given by | | |
- Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Agnel: Curiosités | 1713 |Termites |Piedade no Maranhão
- judiciaires et | | | in Brazil
- historiques du moyen-âge, | | |
- p. 46. _Cf._ Manoel | | |
- Bernardes: Nova Floresta | | |
- ou Sylva de varios | | |
- apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom. | | |
- Lisboá, 1706-47 | | |
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1726 |Not specified|Paris
- Nationale of Paris, | | |
- No. 10,970. D'Addosio: | | |
- Best. Del., p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements contre | 1731 |Insects |Thonon
- les animaux, p. 508 | | |
- | | |
- La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 | 1733 |Vermin |Buranton
- _sqq._ Amira, p. 564 | | |
- | | |
- Rousseaud de Lacombe: | 1741 |Cow |Poitou
- Traité des matières crim. | | |
- D'Addosio: Best. Del., | | |
- p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ant. de Saint-Gervais: | 1750 |She-Ass |Vanvres
- Hist. des Animaux | | |
- | | |
- A Report of the Case of | 1771 |Dog |Chichester, England
- Farmer Carter's Dog. | | |
- Amira, p. 559 | | |
- | | |
- Comparon: Hist. du | 1793 | " |Paris
- Tribunal Révolutionnaire | | |
- de Paris. _Cf._ Sorel, | | |
- op. cit., p. 16 | | |
- | | |
- Filangieri: Scienza della | 18th |Dogs |Italy
- Legislazione | cent. | |
- | | |
- Det. Kong. Danske | | |
- Landhusholdnings-Selskabs | 1805-6|Vermin |Lyö in Denmark
- Skrifter. Ny Saml. ii, 1, | | |
- 22. Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, | 1826 |Locusts |Clermont-Ferrand
- etc., p. 15 | | |
- | | |
- Gazette des Tribunaux, | 1845 |Dog |Paris
- Jan. 23, 1845 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1864 |Pig |Pleternica in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Krauss, quoted by Amira, | 1866 |Locusts |Pozega in
- p. 573 | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- " " " | " |Grasshoppers |Vidovici in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Desnoyer: Recherches, | 19th |Locusts |Catalonia
- etc., p. 15 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Allg. deutsche | | |
- Strafrechts-zeitung, | " |Cock |Leeds in England
- 1861, No. 2. Also Pertile:| | |
- Gli animali in giudizio | | |
- | | |
- Cretella: Gli Animali | " |Wolf |Calabria
- sotto processo in Fanfulla| | |
- 1891, No. 65. _Cf._ Amira,| | |
- p. 569 | | |
- | | |
- New York Herald and Echo | 1906 |Dog |Délémont in
- de Paris, May 4, 1906[8] | | | Switzerland
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-G
-
-Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.
-
- Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passée devant Guiot de
- Montfort, tabellion à Falaise, et donnée par le bourreau de cette
- ville de la somme de _dix sols et dix deniers tournois_ pour sa peine
- et salaire d'avoir trainé, puis pendu à la justice de Falaise une
- truie de l'age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mangé le visage de
- l'enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui était au bers et avoit trois mois et
- environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de _dix sols
- tournois pour un gant neuf_ quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
- cette quittance est donné á Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
- bourreau y declare qu'il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
- et qu'il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.
-
-Charange: _Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux_. Paris, 1764. Tome II. p.
-72. Also _Statistique de Falaise_, 1827. Tome I. p. 63.
-
-
-H
-
-Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
- scel des obligacions de la vicomté de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
- que par devant Bynet de l'Espiney, clerc tabellion juré ou siege dudit
- lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,[9] en la
- viconté d'Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
- homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
- Mortaing, c'est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
- paine et salaire d'estre venue d'Avrenches jusques à Mortaing, pour
- faire acomplir et pendre à la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
- lequel avait tué et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
- ladite viconté de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
- à estre trayné et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de _Co
- ... rin_, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
- dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paié, et en quita le roy nostre
- sire, ledit viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
- sellé ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C'en fut fait
- l'an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII{e}
- jour de septembre. Signé J. LOURS. (Countersigned) BINET.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_
-Mémoires, _ibid._ pp. 439-40.]
-
-
-I
-
-Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King's proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.
-
- A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant à
- Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
- chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
- Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
- justice d'une truye qui avait devoré un petit enffant, a convenu faire
- necessairement les frais, commissions et dépens ci-après déclarés,
- c'est à savoir: Pour dépense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, au maître des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris à Meullant faire
- ladite exécution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
- maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, pour la voiture qui la mena à la justice, six sols parisis.
-
- Item, pour cordes à la lier et hâler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.
-
- Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.
-
- Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
- parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions être vray par
- ces présentes scellées de notre scel, et à greigneur confirmation et
- approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la châtellenie dudit
- lieu de Meullant, le XV{e} de mars l'an 1403. Signé de Baudemont, avec
- paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la châtellenie de Meullant.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Hérisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-des Antiquaires de France_. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]
-
-
-J
-
-Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.
-
- Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion juré pour le roy nostre sire en la
- viconté du Pont de Larche, fut présent Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
- prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
- avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
- homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
- somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c'est
- assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouvé (livré) le pain
- du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
- (Here the names of these prisoners are given.) _Item_ à ung porc
- admené es dictes prisons, le 21{e} jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
- au 17{e} jour de juillet après en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
- pendu par les gares à un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, à quoy
- il avoit esté condempné pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
- et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13{e}
- jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
- tué ung pettit enfant, auquel temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
- pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
- trouvé et baillé la corde qu'il esconvint à lier icelui porc qu'il
- reschapast de ladite prison où il avait esté mis, x deniers tournois.
- Du 16 Octobre 1408.
-
-[Derived from manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_ Mémoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]
-
-
-K
-
-Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.
-
- Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
- terres au conté de Bourgoingue, salut.
-
- Oye la supplication de frère Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
- prieurté de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
- le V{e} jour de ce présent mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
- Muet, dit _le Hochebet_, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
- pors des habitans d'icelle ville ou finaige d'icelle, et au cry de
- l'un d'iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
- sus audit Perrenot, l'ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
- comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu'il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
- suppliant, et par le père dudit Perrenot a esté trouvé blessier à mort
- par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confessè en la
- présence de son dit père e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost après il
- soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
- justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
- arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
- manière qu'il appartient, et encore les détient prissonniers tant
- ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
- que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
- truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessié. Et ledit prieur nous
- ait supplié que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
- trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivré. Nous
- inclinans à sa requeste, avons de gràce especiale ouctroyé et
- consenty, et par ces présentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
- justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l'ung des pourceaulx
- dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis à delivre,
- nonobstant qu'ils aient esté à la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
- mandons que de notre presente grâce vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
- user ledit prieur et autres qu'il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
- grâce.
-
- Donné à Montbar, le XII{e} jour de septembre de l'an de grâce mil CCC
- LXX IX. Ainsi signé. Par monseigneur le duc: _J. Potier_.
-
-[Published by M. Garnier in the _Revue des Sociétés Savantes_, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 _sqq._, from the archives of Côte-d'Or and reprinted by D'Addosio
-in _Bestie Delinquenti_, pp. 277-8.]
-
-
-L
-
-Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk's office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.
-
- Entre le procureur de messieurs[10] demandeur et accusateur au
- principal et requérant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
- du quart d'abondant, d'une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accusé,
- deffendeur et défaillant, d'autre part.
-
- Veu le procès criminel, charges et informations, décret de prise de
- corps, adjournement à troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
- dict quart d'habondant, le recollement des dicts témoings et
- _recognaissance faicte par les dicts témoings de la chienne dont est
- question_, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
- conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d'habondant
- ont esté bien donnés pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accusé,
- attainct et convaincu .........
-
- Pour réparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
- estre pendu et estranglé à une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
- dressée aux lices du Marché aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
- lieu et endroict où les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
- auparavant ladicte exécution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
- assommée par l'exécuteur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
- les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brûlés et
- mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehendé en sa
- personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
- exécuté par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attaché à ladicte
- potence, et déclarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisqués
- à qui il appartiendra, sur cieux préalablement pris la somme de cent
- cinquante livres d'amende que nous avons adjugées auxdicts sieurs, sur
- laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononcé et exécuté
- par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
- Signé _Guyot_.
-
-[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Hérisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France. _Vide_ Mémoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]
-
-
-M
-
-Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, près des foussés du Chastelet de dit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, et ce le 10{e} jour du moys de janvier 1457, présens
- maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
- Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, André Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
- Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins à ce
- appellés et requis, l'an et jour dessus dit.
-
- Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
- dame dudit Savigny, demandeur à l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
- Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d'office dudit lieu de
- Savigny, demandeur à l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
- Savigny _deffendeur_, à l'encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
- honorable homme et saige M{r}. Benoit Milot d'Ostun, licencié en loys
- et bachelier en décret, conseïllier de monseigneur le duc de
- Bourgoingne, a été dit et proposé que le mardi avant Noel dernier
- passé, _une truye_, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
- présentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu'ils été prins en
- flagrant délit, ont commis et perpetré mesmement ladicte truye murtre
- et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
- de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
- Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
- causes d'office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit défendeur
- répondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit à
- souffisance, et lequel par nous a esté sommé et requis ce il vouloit
- avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
- ledit cas luy a esté faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
- première, deuxiéme et tierce fois, que s'il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
- justice ne s'en deust faire l'on estoit tout prest de les oïr en tout
- ce qu'il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et exécution de justice
- que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
- dit et respondu qui'l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
- ait esté procédé en la manière qui s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que pour
- la partie dudit demandeur, avons esté requis instamment de dire droit
- en ceste cause, en la présence dudit défendeur présent et non
- contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons à tous que
- nous avons procédé et donné nostre sentence deffinitive en la manière
- que s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
- esté proposé pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert à
- souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuëment hue. _Aussi
- conseil avec saiges et practiciens_, et aussi considéré en ce cas
- l'usance et coustume du païs de Bourgoingne, aïant Dieu devant nos
- yeulx, nous disons et pronunçons par notre dite sentence, déclairons
- la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquée à la justice de
- Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise à justice et au dernier supplice,
- et estre pendus par les pieds derriers à ung arbre esproné en la
- justice de Madame de Savigny, considéré que la justice de madite dame
- n'est mie présentement elevée, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
- arbre esproné, et ansi le disons et prononçons par notre dicte
- sentence et à droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
- qui n'appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangiés dudit Jehan
- Martin, combien que aient estés trovés ensanglantés, l'on remet _la
- cause d'iceulx coichons_ aux tres jours, et avec ce l'on est content
- de les rendre et bailler audit _Jehan Bailly_, en baillant caucion de
- les rendre s'il est trové qu'il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
- païant les poutures, et fait l'on savoir à tous, sous peine de
- l'amende et de 100 sols tournois qu'ils le dieut et déclairent dedans
- les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, après la
- prononciation d'icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
- promoteur des causes d'office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
- advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demandé
- acte de nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyé, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
- notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
- la présence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommés, je lui ai ouctroyé, ce
- fait l'an et jour dessus dit et présens les dessus tesmoings. _Ita
- est._ Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est écrit:
-
- _Item_, en oultre, nous juge dessus nommé, savoir faisons que
- incontinent après nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnée par nous les an
- et jour, et en la présence des temoings que dessus, avons sommé et
- requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et
- se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recréance d'iceulx; lequel a
- dit et répondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
- en iceulx coichons; et qui s'en rapportoit à ce que en ferions;
- pourquoy sont demeurez à la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
- de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
- causes d'offices, nous en a demandé acte de court, lequel lui nous
- avons ouctroyé et ouctroyons par ces présentes, et avec ce ledict
- procureur de ladicte dame, à moy notaire subescript, m'en demanda
- instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroyé en la presénce desdits
- tesmoings cy-dessus nommés.
-
- _Item_, en après, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
- faisons à tous que incontinent après les chouses dessus dictes, avons
- faict delivrer réalement et de fait ladicte truye à maistre Etienne
- Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant à Châlons-sur-Saône,
- pour icelle mettre à exécucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
- dicte sentence, laquelle délivrance d'icelle trühie faicte par nous
- comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mené sur une
- chairette ladicte truye à ung chaigne esproné, estant en la justice de
- ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esproné, icelluy maistre
- Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant à
- exécution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
- laquelle délivrance et exécution d'icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
- Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demandé acte de
- nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte et donnée, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyée, et avec ce à moi, notaire subscript, m'a demandé instrument
- ledit procureur à luy estre donnée, je luy ai ouctroyé en la présence
- des temoings cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
- Ainsi signé Mongachot, avec paraphe.
-
-Nearly a month later, on "the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin" (which occurred on Feb. 2.), "the six little
-porklets or sucklings" were brought to trial. The following is the _procès
-verbal_.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussée de l'Estang dudit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
- Savigny, et ce le vendredy après la feste de la Purification Notre
- Dame Vierge, présens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
- Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.
-
- Veue les sommacions et réquisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
- damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, à Jehan Bailly
- alias Valot de advohé on repudié les coichons de la truye nouvellement
- mise à exécution par justice à raison du murtre commis et perpetré par
- la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
- esté remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
- d'iceulx coichons rendre, s'il estoit trouvé qu'ils feussions
- culpables du délict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
- les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
- instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
- déclairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et à droit:
- iceulx coichons compéter et appartenir comme biens vaccans à ladite
- dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l'usence et la
- coustume de païs le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte sentence, ledit
- procureur de ladite dame en a demandé acte, de nostre dicte court a
- luy estre donnée et ouctroyée. Avec ce en a demandé instrument à moy
- notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroyé en la présence des dessus
- nommés. Signé Mongachot avec paraphe.
-
-[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boëte 25{e}, liasse 1,
-2, & 3, etc.) _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]
-
-
-N
-
-Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.
-
- _Le lundi 18 avril 1499._
-
- Veu le procès criminel faict par-devant nous à la requeste du
- procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbé et convent de Iosaphat, à
- l'encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers èsprisons de
- céans, pour raison de la mort advenue à la personne d'une jeune
- enfant, nommée Gilon, âgée de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
- enfant avoit eté baillée à nourrice par sa mère: ledict meurtre advenu
- et commis par un pourceau de l'aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
- Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
- et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
- jurisdiction faictes à la requête dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
- sur ce conseil aulx saiges, _ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
- condampnés et condampnons en l'amende envers de justice de dix-huit
- franz_, qu'il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et à tenir
- prison jusqu'à plein payement et satisfaction d'iceulx à tout le moins
- qu'ils avoient baillé bonne et seure caution d'iceulx.
-
- _Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau_, pour les causes contenues
- et établies audict procès, _nous les avons condampné et condampnons à
- être pendu et executé par justice_, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
- seigneurs, par notre sentence définitive, _et à droit_.
-
- Donnè sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
- que susdicts. _Signé_ C. Briseg avec paraphe.
-
-[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]
-
-
-O
-
-Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
- Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l'église et monastère
- de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Prémontré, et les echevins de
- ce même lieu; comme il nous eust été apporté et affirmé par le
- procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbé et convent de
- Saint-Martin de Laon, qu'en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
- appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
- relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust éstranglé et _défacié_ ung jeune
- enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
- cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
- requérant à cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions procéder, comme
- justice at raison le désiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
- savoir et cognoitre la vérité dudit cas, eussion ouï et examiné par
- serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
- Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
- affirmé par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
- dernier passé ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
- Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
- Dizy ..., ayant délaissé en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
- renchargea à une sienne fille, âgée de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
- lequel temps ladite fille s'en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
- laissé ledit enfant couché en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
- ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et défigura et mangea
- le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tôt après ledit enfant, au moyen
- des morsures et dévisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
- siecle trépassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
- dudit cas, et afin d'exemplaire et gardé justice, avons dit, jugé,
- sentencié, prenoncé et appointé, que ledit pourceaulz _estant detenu
- prisonnier_ et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
- hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estranglé, en une fourche de bois, auprès et
- joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
- relligieux, estant auprès de leur cense d'Avin.... En temoing de ce
- nous avons scellé ces presentes de notre scel.
-
- Ce fut fait le quatorzième jour de juing, l'an 1494, et scellé en cire
- rouge; et sur le dos est écrit:
-
- Sentence pour ung pourceaulz executé par justice, admené en la cense
- de Clermont, et étranglé en une fourche les gibez d'Avin.
-
-[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in _L'Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812_, p. 88. _Vide_
-Mémoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]
-
-
-P
-
-Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
- royal et procureur au bailliage et siège présidial de Senlis, bailly
- et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d'Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
- M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
- faisons:
-
- Veu le procès extraordinairement fait à la requête du Procureur de la
- seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue à une
- jeune fille âgée de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyénor Darmeige
- et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
- trouvée avoir esté mangée et devorée en la tete, main senestre et au
- dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
- appartenant à Louis Mahieu, frère de la dite femme et son proche
- voisin;
-
- Le procès verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
- parrain et de sa marraine qui l'ont recogneu;
-
- Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
- dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la visitation faicte de la dicte
- truye à l'instant du dit cas advenu et tout consideré en conseil, il a
- été conclu et advisé par justice que POUR LA CRUAUTÉ ET FEROCITÉ
- COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE, elle sera exterminée par mort et pour ce
- faire sera pendue par l'executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
- estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
- chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses à
- tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
- de ne plus laisser échapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
- seure garde, sous peine d'amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
- s'ily échoit, sauf et sans préjudice à faire droit sur les conclusions
- prinses par le dit Procureur à l'encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
- ainsi que de raison, au témoin de quoy nous avon scellé les présentes
- du scel de la dicte justice.
-
- Ce fu faist le jeudi 27{e} jour de Mars 1557 et exécuté ledit jour par
- l'executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.
-
-[Dom. Grenier, _Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris_, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D'Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]
-
-
-Q
-
-Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupré, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.
-
- A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
- du Bailly du temporel de l'église & abbaye nôtre Dame de Beauprés de
- l'ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables & discretes personnes & mes
- tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbé & convent de
- ladite abbaye, salut. Comme à la requeste du procureur de mesdits
- seigneurs, & par leur justice temporelle qu'ils ont en leur terre &
- seigneurie du Caurroy eût été nagaires prins & mis en la main d'icelle
- leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant à Jean Boullet
- censier & fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &
- cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau étant aux champs & sur le
- territoiiere d'icelle église, auroit par furiosité occis & mis à mort
- un joine fils, nommé Lucas Dupont, de l'âge de quatorze à quinze ans,
- ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis à la garde de
- ces bestes à corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
- thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
- estre faite, & qu'il fut executé jusqu'à mort inclusivement par la
- justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
- & de la detestation d'iceluy. Sur quoy enqueste & information eussent
- été faites de la forme & maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
- procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
- que veu laditte enqueste & information & sur tout en conseil & advis,
- nous par nostre sentence & jugement, avons dies & jugié, que pour
- raison de l'omicide, dont dessus est touchié, fait par ledit thorreau
- en la personne d'iceluy Lucas, & pour la detestation du crime d'iceluy
- homicide, ledit thorreau nommé confisqué à mesdits seigneurs sera
- executé jusques à mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, & pendu à
- une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre & seigneurie dudit
- Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
- le avons condamné & condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
- scel à ces lettres qui furent faites & pronunchiés audit lieu du
- Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
- l'aisné, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes & subjets de mesdits
- seigneurs, Jehan Charles, & Clement le Carpentier, & plusieurs autres
- les seizieme jour de May l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
- Ainsi signé, Ileugles, ad ce commis.
-
-[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupré. Vide _Voyage Littéraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur_. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]
-
-
-R
-
-Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.
-
-After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:
-
- "Venez, famille desolée;
- Venez, pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins;
- Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.
- Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misère;
- Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre père,
- Notre père par qui nous fûmes engendrés,
- Notre père qui nous....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez, tirez, tirez.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Notre père, messieurs....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!
- Ils ont pissé partout.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Ouf! je me sens dejà pris de compassion.
- Ce que c'est qu' à propos toucher la passion!
- Je suis bien empêché. La vérité me presse;
- Le crime est avéré, lui-même il le confesse.
- Mais, s'il est condamné, l'embarras est égal;
- Voilà bien des enfants réduits à l'hôpital."
- _Les Plaideurs_, Act III, sc. 3.
-
-
-S
-
-Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.
-
- Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
- Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,[11] da sie gleich
- hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
- worden. Vber welch vnerhörten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
- Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
- Leipzig sich darüber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
- Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
- abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen öden ort billig geführet,
- daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
- Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
- Schäfferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
- auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.
-
-[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-_Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit_. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]
-
-
-
-
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-rendus au Moyen-Age contre les Animaux. Chambery, 1846. Reprint in book
-form of a paper originally published in Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie. Tome xii., 1846.
-
-MIRAUT: Histoire de Sardaigne.
-
-NEWELL, WILLIAM WELLS: Conjuring Rats. The Journal of American Folk Lore
-(January-March, 1892).
-
-NOORDEWIER, M. J.: Nederduitsche Regtsoudheden. Utrecht, 1853.
-
-NORK, F.: Article in Scheible's Das Kloster weltlich und geistlich, etc.
-Vol. xii., pp. 942-949. Stuttgart, 1849.
-
-OPZOOMER, C. W.: Di Dieren voor den Rechter. Volksalmanak van het jaar
-1862.
-
-ORANO, G.: La Criminalità nelle sue relazioni col clima. Roma, 1882.
-
-ORTOLI, FR.: Les Procès d'Animaux au moyen-âge. La Tradition. Paris, 1888.
-pp. 77-82. Based on Vernet in Thémis viii.
-
-OSENBRÜGGEN, EDUARD: Studien zur deutschen und Schweizerischen
-Rechtsgeschichte. Schaffhausen, 1868. (vii. Die Personificirung der
-Thiere, pp. 139-149.)
-
-PAPON: Recueil d'Arrêts notables des Cours Souveraines de France. Liv.
-xxii., Titre 7.
-
-PEIGNOT, GABRIEL: Essai chronologique sur les moeurs, etc. les plus
-remarquables dans la Bourgogne, p. 68. Dijon, 1827.
-
-PERTILE, ANTONIO: Gli Animali in Giudizio. Atti del Reale Instituto
-Veneto. Tomo iv., serie vi. Venezia, 1886.
-
-PIERQUIN: Traité de la Folie des Animaux et de ses Rapports avec celle de
-l'Homme et les Legislations actuelles. Paris, 1839.
-
-PORTO, V.: La Scuola criminale positiva et il progetto de nuovo codice.
-Verona, 1884.
-
-PROAL, LOUIS: Le Crime et la Peine. Paris, 1892.
-
- This work is opposed to the theories of Lombroso and the new school of
- criminal anthropologists, but states their views fully and clearly.
-
-QUINONES, JUAN DE: Tratado de Langostas. Madrid, 1620. A treatise on
-exorcisms of locusts, weevils, rats, mice, and birds.
-
-RAYNAUD, THEOPHILE: De Monitoriis, etc. (Part II. c. 12, No. 6) in his
-Opusc. Misc. 1665. Tom. xiv., p. 482.
-
- The author criticises Chassenée.
-
-RICCIUS, ALOYSIUS: Resolutiones (408).
-
-ROCH, HEINRICH: Böhmische, Schlesische und Lausitzische Chroniken.
-
-ROCHE-FLAVIN, DE LA: Arrêts notables du Parlement de Toulouse. Liv. iii.
-Titre 2.
-
-ROCHER, LE PÈRE: Gloire de l'Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise.
-
-ROSARIUS, HIEROLYMUS: Quod Animalia Bruta Ratione Utantur melius Homine.
-Amstel., 1654.
-
-ROUSSEAU DE LACOMBE: Traité des Matières Criminelles. Part 1, ch. 2, sect.
-1, distinct. 8.
-
-RUCHAT, ABRAHAM: Abrégé de l'Histoire Ecclésiastique du Pays de Vaud.
-
-SAINT-FOIX: Oeuvres. 1778, iv., 97.
-
-SAUVAL: Histoire de Paris. Vol. iii., p. 387.
-
-SCHLÄGER: Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter.
-
-SCHMID, REINHOLD: Gesetze der Angelsachsen. 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1858.
-
-SEIFART, K.: Hingerichtete Thiere und Gespenster. Zeitschrift für deutsche
-Kulturgeschichte, 1856, pp. 424-30.
-
-SLOET: Die Dieren in het Germaansche Volksgeloof en Volksgebruik.
-'s-Gravenhage, 1887.
-
-SOREL, ALBERT: Procès contre des Animaux et Insectes suivis au Moyen-âge
-dans la Picardie et le Valois. Compiegne, 1877.
-
-STARK, HERMANN: Griechische Antiquitäten. Vol. i., 487.
-
-TESTRUP, KR. S.: Rinds Herreds Kronika (Samlinger til jydsk Historie og
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-
-THEMIS JURISCONSULTI: Tome i., pp. 178-181; Tome viii., part 2, pp. 45
-_sqq._
-
-THIERS: Des superstitions. Vol. i., 48a.
-
-THOMAS AQUINAS: Summa Theologiæ. Vol. ii., pars, lxxvi., art. 2.
-
-THONISSEN, J.: Études sur l'Histoire du Droit Criminel. Vol. ii., pp. 198
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-
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-TOBLER, G.: Thierprocesse in der Schweiz. Bern, 1893.
-
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-
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-
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-
-VIVIO, FRANCESCO: Decisiones. No. 68. 1610.
-
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-
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-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil
- spirits, 76
-
- Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, 180
-
- Addosio, Carlo d', his _Bestie Delinquenti_ cited, 1, 4;
- his list of animal prosecutions, 135;
- on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, 159
-
- Æschines, cited, 172
-
- Æschylus, his _Choephoroi_ cited, 174
-
- Ahuramazda, 57, 61, 82, 176
-
- Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, 153
-
- Altiat, his poem quoted, 93
-
- Amira, Prof. Karl von, his _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ cited, 1-3,
- 137
-
- Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all
- incantations and excommunications, 4, 36;
- citations from the Bible in proof of their power, 25;
- render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake
- Leman, 27;
- turn white bread black to punish heresy, 28;
- fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, 28, 29;
- sold by the Pope, 30;
- hurled against noxious vermin, 37;
- made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, 37;
- differ from excommunications, 51-54;
- superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by
- Paris green, 53
-
- Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, 2;
- office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, 3, 5;
- as satellites of Satan or agents of God, 5, 6, 52-57, 67;
- personification of, 10, 11;
- their competency as witnesses, 11;
- origin of their judicial prosecution, 12;
- as born criminals, 14;
- tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and,
- 14, 193;
- instances of their criminal prosecution, 16, 18, 21, 37-50, 93-124,
- 134-157, 160-163;
- methods of procedure against, 31;
- whether legally laity or clergy, 32;
- punitive and preventive prosecution of, 33;
- their consciousness of right and wrong, 35, 247;
- false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, 40;
- can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, 51;
- items of expense in prosecuting, 49, 138, 140-143;
- not mere machines, 66;
- in folk-lore, 84;
- worship of, 85;
- imperfect lists of prosecuted, 135-137;
- burned and buried alive, 138;
- put to the rack to extort confession, 139;
- confiscation of valuable, 164, 189;
- unclean flesh of executed, 169;
- imputed criminality of, 177;
- criminals as ferocious, 212;
- mental and moral qualities of men and, 234;
- six categories of their criminal offences, 235;
- the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of
- men and, 247-252
-
- Anatolus, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Angel, Emile, cited, 124
-
- Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, 168;
- its cruel doctrine of accessories, 178;
- on tainted swords, 187
-
- Angrô-mainyush, 57, 59, 61, 82
-
- Anthony, St., patron of pigs, 158
-
- Anthropologists, criminal researches of 211, 215
-
- Aquinas. _See_ Thomas
-
- Arcadius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Ashes, modern and mediæval use of vermifugal, 53
-
- Augustine, St., cited, 94, 106
-
- _Aura corrumpens_ in houses and stalls, 8
-
- Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, 75
-
- Avesta, on exorcisms, 36;
- on good and evil creations, 57;
- on mad dogs, 176
-
- Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, 109
-
- Azpilcueta, Martin. _See_ Dr. Navarre.
-
-
- Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, 84;
- his preference for black beasts, 165
-
- Bailly, Gaspard, his _Traité des Monitoires_ cited, 52, 92-108
-
- "Basilisk-egg," 10
-
- Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, 136
-
- Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, 183
-
- Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, 132
-
- Beasts, sweet and stenchy, 55
-
- Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, 9
-
- Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, 175
-
- Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, 212
-
- Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, 245
-
- Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, 28
-
- Bernardes, Manoel, his _Nova Floresta_, 124
-
- Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, 2, 17, 20;
- list of prosecuted animals, 135-137
-
- Bichat, his defective cranium, 217
-
- Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of
- unexpiated crime on persons and property, 6-8;
- his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, 73
-
- Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, 218
-
- Blackstone, on deodands, 186, 189, 192
-
- Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, 194
-
- "Blue Laws," an advance in penal legislation, 209
-
- Bodelschwingh, his _bacillus infernalis_, 91
-
- Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, 127
-
- Boër, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, 153
-
- Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, 155
-
- Bonnivard, François, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, 38
-
- Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, 208
-
- Bougeant, Père, his _Amusement Philosophique_ cited, 66-69;
- 80-86, 88-90, 92
-
- Bracton, 167;
- on deodands, 186
-
- Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, 217-219
-
- Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, 187
-
- Buggery, instances of this "nameless crime," 147-153;
- she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, 150;
- in the Carolina punished with death by fire, 151;
- in the Mosaic law, 152;
- sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, 153
-
- Bull, executed for murder, 161
-
-
- Calvin, his conception of God, 59
-
- Canute, King, 178
-
- Carolina, the, its severe penalties, 182
-
- Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, 151
-
- Cattle, bewitched by bad air, 8
-
- Cervantes, 167
-
- Character, factors in the formation of, 219;
- responsibility for, 239, 243
-
- Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, 80, 225
-
- Chassenée, Bartholomew, his _Consilia_, 2, 21-23;
- distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, 18;
- equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, 20;
- his erudition, 24;
- his absurd deductions, 26;
- regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, 32
-
- Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, 174
-
- Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan
- and as agents of God, 3-6;
- capital punishment never inflicted by, 31;
- its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, 50
-
- Cicero, cited, 22, 101;
- his approval of atrocious penalties, 178
-
- Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, 10, 11, 162;
- nature and origin of its supposed eggs, 163-5
-
- Cockatrice, 12, 163
-
- Coleridge, his definition of madman, 228
-
- Corpses, prosecuted and executed, 110, 198, 199;
- cannot inherit, 110
-
- "Corruption of blood," in theology and law, 181
-
- Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, 212
-
- Cows, executed for homicide, 169
-
- Cranks, execution of, 249-251
-
- Cretella, 17
-
- Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, 219;
- sentenced to death, 251
-
- Criminality, examples of imputed, 177-185;
- ancient and mediæval conceptions of, 200;
- punished for the safety of society, 211, 248;
- compared to vitriol, 212;
- supposed physical indices of, 213-217;
- casual and constitutional, 214-223;
- ativism the source of, 212, 215;
- the result of hypnotism, 223-225;
- due to many uncontrollable conditions, 230;
- motives underlying animal, 235;
- animals conscious of, 247;
- contagiousness of, 252, 256
-
- Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, 122
-
- Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, 30
-
- Cybele, invoked against vermin, 133
-
-
- Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his _Rerum Criminalium
- Praxis_, 16;
- citations from this work, 109, 146;
- regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy,
- 153
-
- Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra's teachings degraded by the, 59
-
- Demosthenes, cited, 172
-
- Deodands, nature of, 186-190, 192;
- abolished in England under Queen Victoria, 192
-
- Devils, their damage to landed property, 7;
- multiplied by the spread of Christianity, 13, 80;
- destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, 68-70;
- incarnate in every babe, 70;
- maladies produced by, 72;
- modern inventions the devices of, 229
-
- Didymos, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his
- assassination, 175
-
- Dogs, trial and execution of mad, 176;
- crucified in Rome for imputed crime, 177
-
- Döpler, Jacob, on sodomy, 152;
- on _Lex talionis_, 182;
- on vampires, 197
-
- Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, 57
-
- Draco (Drakôn), his law punishing weapons, 172
-
- Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, 253-255
-
- Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, 38
-
- Dumas, his _Count of Monte Christo_ cited, 240
-
- Duret, Jean, his _Treatise on Pains and Penalties_, 108
-
-
- Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime
- from a psychiatrical point of view, 170
-
- Eldrad, St., expels serpents, 50
-
- Electricity, execution by, 210
-
- Elk, as demon, 90
-
- Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, 172
-
- Erinnys, appeasing the, 174
-
- Escheat, in Scotch law, 189
-
- Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, 105
-
- Eustace, St., 56
-
- Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, 232
-
- Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, 3;
- sold at Rome, 30;
- properly speaking, animals not subject to, 51, 100;
- comical survivals of, 128.
- _See_ Anathemas
-
- Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, 27;
- applied as plasters, 72;
- superseded by conjurations among Protestants, 125;
- by Mohammedans, 137
-
-
- Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, 38
-
- _Felo de se_, a sort of treason, 190.
- _See_ Suicide
-
- Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, 253
-
- Field-mice, conjuration of, 133
-
- Flesh of executed animals tainted, 169
-
- Flies as demons, 28, 86
-
- Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, 136
-
- Fly-flaps, papal, 29
-
- Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, 198
-
- Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, 218
-
- Fox, diabolical nature of the, 56
-
- Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, 207
-
- Fricker, Thüring, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger,
- 116
-
-
- Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, 124
-
- Galton, on heredity, 239
-
- Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, 217
-
- Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers,
- 177
-
- Genius, to madness close allied, 228
-
- Görres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, 125
-
- Gratiolet, on the brain of the "Hottentot Venus," 218
-
- Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder,
- 9, 174
-
- Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, 132
-
- Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, 128
-
- Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bâle, 162
-
- Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, 250
-
-
- Harpokration, Valerius, cited, 172
-
- Harrison, Miss, cited, 187
-
- Hart, symbolism of the, 56
-
- Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, 252
-
- Hemmerlein, Felix. _See_ Malleolus
-
- Hens, crowing, 10
-
- Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and
- scientists, 232
-
- Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, 243
-
- Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, 249
-
- Honorius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Horses, condemned to death for homicide, 162
-
- Hubert, St., 56
-
- Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, 103
-
- Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild
- animals, 174
-
- Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, 223-226;
- as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, 225
-
-
- Idols, decapitation of, 174
-
- Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, 113-115;
- not in Noah's Ark, 120
-
- Insanity, degrees of, 200-203;
- in Italian and German law, 204-206;
- difficulty of defining, 226-228;
- in English law, 246;
- moral, 250;
- as a shelter for crime, 256
-
- Insects, prosecution of, 37, 41-49;
- incarnations of demons, 86
-
- Italy, palliation of crime in, 203, 204
-
-
- Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, 240-246
-
- Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, 152, 165
-
- John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, 28
-
- Jonson, Ben, cited, 130
-
- Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, 74
-
- Jörgensen, cited, 17
-
- Joshua, his penal cruelty, 180
-
- King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, 55
-
- Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, 219
-
- Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, 171
-
- Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, 171
-
-
- Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, 238
-
- Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, 235
-
- Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by,
- 141
-
- Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, 163
-
- Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, 223
-
- Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, 169
-
- Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, 73
-
- Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, 254
-
- Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal
- justice, 167;
- inflicts horrible mutilations, 182
-
- Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison,
- 175
-
- Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, 237
-
- Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, 3, 64;
- dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, 22, 93, 94;
- prosecution of, 95-108, 136
-
- Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical
- possession, 71
-
- Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, 14;
- opposed to trial by jury, 185;
- regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of
- criminality, 213;
- on ativism as the source of crime, 215;
- innate criminality not eradicated by education, 223;
- compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of
- animals, 251
-
- Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, 74
-
- Lycia, punished by imputation, 180
-
-
- Majolus, cited, 86
-
- Maledictions. _See_ Anathemas
-
- Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg
- professors, 27;
- records a prosecution of Spanish flies, 110;
- his formula for banning serpents, 121
-
- Mangin, Arthur, cited, 16, 139
-
- Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, 60
-
- Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta's skull to that of a savage, 217
-
- Mantegazza, Prof., his "tormentatore," 245
-
- Manu, Institutes of, 168
-
- Marro, on metaphors as facts, 216
-
- Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight
- beasts, 148
-
- Ménebréa, M. L., 2, 17;
- his theory untenable, 40
-
- Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, 85
-
- Mithridates, experiments with poisons, 244
-
- Moles, prosecution of, 111-113
-
- Monks, as landed proprietors in France, 158
-
- Monomania, frequency of, 227
-
- Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, 38
-
- Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, 176
-
- Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, 229
-
- Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, 170;
- barbarity of, 167, 180
-
- Murder, miasma of, 9, 174;
- weapons tainted by, 187-190
-
- Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, 176, 182
-
- Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, 64;
- in modern life, 228
-
-
- Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, 212
-
- Narrenkötterlein, dog sentenced to a, 175
-
- Nature, imperfection of, 61
-
- Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, 90
-
- Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, 63
-
- Nikôn, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence,
- 172
-
- Noah, God's covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts,
- 168
-
- Novels, morbific influence of sensational, 253
-
- Numa Pompilius, quoted, 106;
- his law for protecting boundary stones, 183
-
-
- Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, 68
-
- Osenbrüggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, 10,
- 17
-
- Ovid, quoted, 101, 103
-
- Oxen, executed, 168;
- punished although innocent, 183
-
-
- Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, 179
-
- Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, 198
-
- Pape, Guy, cited, 108
-
- Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, 126
-
- Pardoning power, exercise of the, 248
-
- Parsis, their Dasturs, 59;
- co-workers of Ahuramazda, 61, 82;
- no doctrine of atonement, 63
-
- Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, 62
-
- Patriotism as a perverter of justice, 185
-
- Pausanias cited, 172
-
- Penology, man and beast in modern, 14, 193;
- mediæval and modern, 15, 200, 206-210;
- in Italy and Germany, 203-206;
- brutality of mediæval, 206-209;
- moral and penal responsibility, 210;
- still inchoate, 15, 219-223, 257;
- deterrent aims of, 211, 248, 249;
- law of the survival of the fittest in, 221-223;
- punitive and preventive, 237;
- its relation to psycho-pathology, 248
-
- Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, 66
-
- Perjury, retaliative punishment of, 182
-
- Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, 118
-
- Phlebotomy. _See_ Blood-letting
-
- Pico di Mirandola, quoted, 103
-
- Piety, market value of, 7
-
- Pigs. _See_ Swine
-
- Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, 29
-
- Plato, his theory of creation, 59;
- on homicidal animals, 173;
- on retributive and preventive punishment, 237
-
- Pliny, quoted, 103
-
- Pollux, Julius, quoted, 172
-
- Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, 148
-
- Predestination in theology and science, 232-234
-
- Prussia, barbarous punishments, 180;
- opposed to reform, 205
-
- Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, 172;
- but not corpses, 199
-
- Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, 256
-
- Puritans, their penal enactments, 209
-
- Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, 87
-
-
- Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, 56-58
-
-
- Racine, his caricature of beast trials in _Les Plaideurs_, 166, 361
-
- Ram, banished to Siberia, 175
-
- Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, 130
-
- Rats, prosecution of, 18-21, 136;
- friendly letters of advice to, 129;
- Irish custom of rhyming, 130
-
- Raven, an imp of Satan, 57
-
- Renaud d'Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, 20
-
- Responsibility, moral and penal, 210
-
- Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of
- superstition, 14
-
- Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, 73
-
- Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and
- gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, 251;
- regards animals as often more rational than men, 252
-
-
- Satan, his earthly sovereignty, 60, 70;
- the doctrine of his final redemption, 68
-
- Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, 113, 120
-
- Schläger, cited, 176
-
- Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, 187
-
- Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, 113-115
-
- Scholasticism, quiddities of, 33
-
- Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, 127;
- man's responsibility for character alone, 239, 243
-
- Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, 178
-
- Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, 112
-
- Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, 147
-
- Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, 51;
- freed from poison by St. Hugon, 103
-
- Shakespeare, alludes to "be-rhymed" rats, 130;
- and a wolf on the gallows, 157
-
- Silius Italicus, quoted, 103
-
- Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, 253
-
- Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, 238
-
- Socrates, on self-perfection, 234
-
- Sodomy. _See_ Buggery
-
- Soldan, cited, 17
-
- Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, 128
-
- Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, 65;
- prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, 198;
- strangled in prison, 199
-
- Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, 190;
- condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, 191, 192;
- due to manifold influences, 229
-
- Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, 14
-
- Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, 28
-
- Swine, execution of, 16, 140-145, 149, 153-157, 161, 169;
- as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, 56, 165;
- Gadarene, 69, 91, 165
-
- Swords, tainted, 187
-
-
- Taine, his definition of man, 214
-
- Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, 236
-
- Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, 180
-
- Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, 213
-
- Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their
- defender as more industrious than the friars, 123
-
- Tertullian, quoted, 106
-
- Theognis, his bust punished for murder, 172
-
- Thomas à Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., 198
-
- Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, 53-55,
- 88, 101, 103
-
- Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, 90
-
- Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, 37, 94, 107
-
- Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, 1, 170
-
- Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law,
- 179-181
-
- Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the
- fig-tree, 25
-
- Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, 75
-
- Tribunals, proper office of criminal, 211, 232, 248
-
- Tritheim, on Satan's invisible apparition, 166
-
- Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, 179
-
- Türler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical
- court of Berne, 170
-
-
- Vampires, superstitions concerning, 195-198
-
- Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, 178
-
- Venidad, quoted, 63
-
- Ventilation, "bewitched kine" the result of bad, 8
-
- Vermin. _See_ Insects
-
- Virgil, quoted, 26
-
-
- Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, 38-49
-
- Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, 75
-
- Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, 195;
- decree for their extermination, 198
-
- _Werther_, Goethe's, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, 253
-
- Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, 125
-
- Witches in Judaic and mediæval law, on a par with animals, 145;
- rendered harmless by burning, 196
-
- Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, 9
-
-
- Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, 57-59
-
- Zoöpsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology,
- 237
-
- Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, 201
-
-
-_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] The name is also spelled Chassanée and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.
-
-[2] "Item: a été délibéré que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l'on contribuera aux frais au pro rata."
-
-[3] These animals are spoken of as _unvernünftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmäuse_. _Lut_ might be derived from the Old German _lût_ (_Laut_,
-Schrei), in which case _Lutmaus_ would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from _lutum_ (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediæval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.
-
-[4] The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of "monitoires" and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.
-
-[5] A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.
-
-[6] This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.
-
-[7] Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.
-
-[8] In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.
-
-[9] In modern French _pendard_ means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.
-
-[10] Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.
-
-[11] _Mietkuhe_, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
-
-The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with
-transliterations in this text version.
-
-The original text includes a Maltese Cross symbol that is represented as
-[+] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
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-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
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-Language: English
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-Character set encoding: ASCII
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
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-produced from images generously made available by The
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-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9_s._
-
-EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9_s._
-
-LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Execution of a Sow.]
-
-
-
-
- THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND
- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
- BY E. P. EVANS
- AUTHOR OF
- "ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,"
- "EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC., ETC.
-
-
- [Illustration]
-
-
- LONDON
- WILLIAM HEINEMANN
- MCMVI
-
-
-
-
-_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Sources--Amira's distinction between retributive and
- preventive processes--Addosio's incorrect designation of
- the latter as civil suits--Inconsistent attitude of the
- Church in excommunicating animals--Causal relation of crime
- to demoniacal possession--Squatter sovereignty of devils--
- _Aura corrumpens_--Diabolical infestation and lack of
- ventilation--"Bewitched kine"--Greek furies and Christian
- demons--Homicidal bees, laying cocks and crowing hens--
- Theory of the personification of animals--Beasts in
- Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws--Animal prosecutions
- and witchcraft--The Mosaic code in Christian courts--Pagan
- deities as demons--Born malefactors among beasts--The
- theory of punishment in modern criminology _p._ 1
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
- Criminal prosecution of rats--Chassenee appointed to defend
- them--Report of the trial--Chassenee employed as counsel in
- other cases of this kind--His dissertation on the subject--
- Nature of his argument--Authorities and precedents--The
- withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and
- explained by Dr. Trench--Eels and blood-suckers in Lake
- Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of
- Heidelberg theologians--White bread turned black, and
- swallows, fish, and flies destroyed by anathema--St.
- Pirminius expels reptiles--Vermifugal efficacy of St.
- Magnus' crosier--Papal execratories--Animals regarded by
- the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of
- clergy--Methods of procedure--Jurisdiction of the courts--
- Records of judicial proceedings against insects--Important
- trial of weevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over
- more than eight months--Untenableness of Menebrea's
- theory--Summary of the pleadings--Futile attempts at
- compromise--Final decision doubtful--St. Eldrad and the
- snakes--Views of Thomas Aquinas--Distinction between
- excommunication and anathema--"Sweet beasts and stenchy
- beasts"--Animals as incarnations of devils--Their
- diabolical character assumed in papal formula for blessing
- water to kill vermin--Amusing treatise by Pere Bougeant on
- this subject--All animals animated by devils, and all
- pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them--Demons
- the real causes of diseases--Father Lohbauer's prescription
- in such cases--Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.--
- Recent instances of demoniacal possession--Hoppe's
- psychological explanation of them--Charcot on faith-cures--
- Why not the duty of the Catholic Church to inculcate
- kindness to animals--Zooelatry a form of demonolatry--Gnats
- especially dangerous devils--Bodelschwingh's discovery of
- the _bacillus infernalis_--Gaspard Bailly's disquisition
- with specimens of plaints, pleas, etc.--Ayrault protests
- against such proceedings--Hemmerlein's treatise on
- exorcisms--Criminal prosecution of field-mice--Vermin
- excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne--Protocol of
- judicial proceedings against caterpillars--Conjurers of
- cabbage-worms--Swallows proscribed by a Protestant
- parson--Custom of writing letters of advice to rats--Writs
- of ejectment served on them--Rhyming rats in Ireland--
- Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos--Capital
- punishment of larger quadrupeds--Berriat-Saint-Prix's
- Reports and Researches--List of culprits--Beasts burned and
- buried alive and put to the rack--Swine executed for
- infanticide--Bailly's bill of expenses--An ox decapitated
- for its demerits--Punishment of buggery--Cohabitation of a
- Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy--Trial of a
- sow and six sucklings for murder--Bull sent to the gallows
- for killing a lad--A horse condemned to death for
- homicide--A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural
- crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie's investigation of the
- subject--Racine's satire on such prosecutions in _Les
- Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat the law of the
- primitive man and the savage--The application of this iron
- rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit pig not to
- be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects--
- Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell sentenced
- to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection--
- Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment prescribed for mad
- dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of talion and decrees
- of corruption of blood--Examples in ancient and modern
- legislation--Cicero approves of such penalties for
- political offences--Survival of this conception of justice
- in theology--Constitutio Criminalis Carolina--Lombroso
- opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism--
- Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in English
- law--Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland--
- Blackstone's theory of it untenable--Penalties inflicted
- for suicide--Ancient legislation on this subject--
- Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in England _p._ 18
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
- Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
- Mediaeval tribunals cut with the executioner's sword the
- intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
- untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
- ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
- vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
- little children "even on Friday"--Pope Stephen VI. brings
- the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediaeval and modern
- conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
- jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
- pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
- these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediaeval
- penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
- sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--"Blue Laws" a great
- advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and
- penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
- abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity
- of criminals, but simply an indication of low aesthetic
- sense--Theories of the origin and nature of crime--
- Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the
- encephalon--Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat,
- Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly
- dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures
- proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not
- sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--
- Difficulty of defining insanity--Coleridge's definition too
- inclusive--Predestination and evolution--Criminality among
- the lower animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
- Schopenhauer's doctrine of responsibility for character--
- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret--
- "Method in Madness" not uncommon--Social safety the supreme
- law--Application of this principle to "Cranks"--Spirit of
- imitation peculiarly strong in such classes--Contagiousness
- of crime--Criminology now in a period of transition _p._ 193
-
-
- APPENDIX
-
- A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
- agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
- coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
- Amblevins _p._ 259
-
- B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
- Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
-
- C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
- against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
-
- D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
- the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
- of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
-
- E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
- commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
-
- F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
- of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
-
- G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
- Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
- of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a
- new glove _p._ 335
-
- H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
- acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous
- tournois from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for
- having hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child
- in the parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
-
- I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
- Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
- bailiff and the king's proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
- certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
- had devoured a small child _p._ 338
-
- J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
- Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont
- de Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and
- six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and
- to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
-
- K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
- Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of
- the Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
- Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
- which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
- the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
- sows _p._ 342
-
- L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
- the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
- be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
-
- M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
- 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
- sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
- the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
-
- N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
- prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
- Josaphat, in the Commune of Seves, near Chartres, against a
- pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
- this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
- for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
-
- O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor
- of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon,
- condemning a pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide
- committed on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
-
- P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
- and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
- Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout
- to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a
- girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
- said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on
- penalty of an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
-
- Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
- by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupre, for furiously
- killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
- years of age _p._ 358
-
- R. Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
- dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
- capon _p._ 360
-
- S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
- University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
- killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
-
- INDEX _p._ 373
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled "Bugs and Beasts before the Law," and "Modern and Mediaeval
-Punishment," which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira's _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d'Addosio's _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler's _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Menebrea, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenee, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.
-
-Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-"metaphysical aid" and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
-
-D'Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
-maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
-
-The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.
-
-It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der roemischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-"godliness is profitable" not only "unto all things," but also, as
-mediaeval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his "son Timothy" never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-_benedictiones locorum_.
-
-We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-"bewitched kine." European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
-
-The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediaeval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-"transgressed in the thing accursed." It was the same horror of aiding
-and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-"basilisk-egg," or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.
-
-A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrueggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediaeval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king's ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrueggen's
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bale was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.
-
-The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind's eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.
-
-Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
-deutschen Bischoefe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des goettlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
-
-It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
-
-In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin's _L'Homme et la Bete_ (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
-
-The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder's _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
-(Antverpiae, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled "De Damno Pecuario" is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
-
-The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
-
-The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are "Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere," in _Miscellen aus
-der neuesten auslaendischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Joergensen's _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella's "Gli Animali sotto Processo," in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Menabrea, and Soldan's "La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia," in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrueggen's theory.
-
-In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
-
-It is said that Bartholomew Chassenee,[1] a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l'Eveque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop's
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenee to defend them.
-
-In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenee
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenee addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.
-
-At a later period of his life Chassenee was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrieres and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d'Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenee thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.
-(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]
-
-In the report of the trial published in the _Themis Jurisconsulte_ for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenee conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.
-
-Chassenee is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.
-
-This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenee now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.
-"The principal question," he says, "is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent." He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: "First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through
-procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication." Chassenee's method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.
-
-The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediaeval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.
-
-His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by "whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero." The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called "wisdom of ages," renders him peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.
-
-In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenee refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David's malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God's curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, "Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: "If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less" (_cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).
-
-An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: "It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false." According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that "drew on it the curse." The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: "Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart." As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediaeval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, "for the time of figs was not yet."
-
-A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenee is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil's first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that "no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds," all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since "no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema." Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer's dissertation.
-
-Coming down to more recent times, Chassenee mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib's host, "all dead corpses." William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis
-ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and "no other remedy was at hand."
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-"deacons with fly-flaps," who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed "to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth."
-
-The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Fuessen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints'
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus' Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter's Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.
-
-In his "First Counsel" Chassenee not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)
-_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. Sec. 5.] For this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word "conjurer"
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.
-
-Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenee thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediaeval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.
-
-Chassenee also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that "things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them." Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where "Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass."
-
-Chassenee endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zooe-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenee insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that "sin is not imputed when there is no law." He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be "well-thought, well-said and well-done," not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata
-hukhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.
-
-Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; "and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema." In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallice urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenee, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man's sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.
-
-The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charancon)
-known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different
-names, amblevin, beche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.
-
-Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-Francois Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: "Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our sins." Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A _proces-verbal_,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.
-
-About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Leon Menebrea, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: _De l'origine de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-age contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the _Memoires de la Societe Royale
-Academique de Savoie_.
-
-It may be proper to add that Menebrea's theory of "the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given," is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that "these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity."
-
-This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediaeval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.
-
-But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before "his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official" by the
-syndics and procurators, Francois Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: "Formerly by virtue of divine services and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, Francois Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication."
-
-In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario
-moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).
-
-The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants' advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, Francois Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants' plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d'etre_
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs' replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, "a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God." It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.
-
-On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.
-
-Meanwhile, in view of the law's long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d'Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs' advocate, Francois Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-"without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals," and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it "in good form and of perpetual validity," provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed "L. Prunier,
-curial," and stamped with the seal of the commune.
-
-But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an "Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien," containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the _proces-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till "the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation," which fell on the 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.
-
-At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis_). The "egregious Petremand Bertrand," in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.
-
-The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.
-
-In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: "_pro visitatione III flor._," by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then "_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._," which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-"_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._," three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop's official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_
-Appendix A.)
-
-In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man's labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.
-
-It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Pere Rochex:
-Gloire de l'Abbaye et Vallee de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of
-Briancon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God's creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediaeval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.
-
-Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-"waived" or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traite des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.
-
-One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (_s'en prendre a Dieu_). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediaeval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.
-
-Thomas Aquinas, the "angelic doctor," in his _Summa Theologiae_ raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man's
-subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother's womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of "the beauty of Israel"; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.
-
-It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediaeval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan "instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore proper to be cursed," as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenee refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. Sec. 75),
-and adds "the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment." This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
-
-But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was "printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,"
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-"several fine moralities," and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes
-doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
-
- "Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind."
-
-According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
-
-Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: "Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious." "We are all," adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, "more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended." Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
-
-This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angro-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,
-_hukhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhukhta_,
-_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these "mighty opposites," the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that "dreadful idealization of wickedness" which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angro-mainyush.
-
-Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast
-
- "Red in tooth and claw
- With ravin,"
-
-that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the
-
- "One far-off divine event,
- To which the whole creation moves,"
-
-consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.
-
-Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature's handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to
-
- "Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die."
-
-The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates Angromainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (_spento mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer's)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.
-
-But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediaeval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds'
-claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, "dire
-chimeras" and other "delicate monsters," there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Daedalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actaeon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Maera
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.
-
-Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: "I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought." In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to "preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits."
-
-This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Pere Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: "_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_," and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes' _Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.
-
-If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.
-
-But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God's mercy or wrath is lost. "Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion." The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.
-
-Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been "prepared" for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two "exceeding
-fierce" demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, "Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?" This question has no
-significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Pere Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.
-
-Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime. Some of them are engaged in "going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it," in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-"science falsely so called." Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to "forsake the devil and all his works."
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.
-
-The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.
-
-The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any
-mediaeval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale
-Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der roemischen Benediktionale_.
-
-That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of "a maiden of angelic beauty" in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stoecker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: "O, that Jew! Didn't
-he have to drink gall?" When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him "go to hell," which he forthwith did, "moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-'Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!' The voice was so sad,"
-adds the bishop, "that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil."
-
-Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, "Every knee in
-heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus," the fallen "Son
-of the Morning" retorted, "Not Luci, not Luci--never!"
-
-It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstaett. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-"Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops." In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession "is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church." Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.
-
-Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the "metaphysical aid" of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.
-
-Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that "what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it." But while affirming that "evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind," and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed, the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.
-
-The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on _Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklaerung des Besessenseins_
-(_Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie_, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. "The priest," he
-says, "exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils." Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of "priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical means of healing," and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-_Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891_ (Saarbruecken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the "holy coat" in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called "documentary proofs," consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-"were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner." He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person's own mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole."
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole." Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people's lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum's assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on "Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition" in Appleton's _Popular Science Monthly_ for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).
-
-The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it "hath no skill in surgery."
-
-But to return from this digression, Pere Bougeant's theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, "enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is the first act of God's vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell."
-
-Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angro-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.
-
-There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. "What matters it,"
-replies the Jesuit Father, "whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned." The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about "des
-Pudels Kern."
-
-This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim _universitas non delinquit_ has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, _quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus_, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That "the devil is an ass" is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-_debris_ of exploded mythologies adrift on the stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as
-
- "Der Herr der Ratten und der Maeuse,
- Der Fliegen, Froesche, Wanzen, Laeuse."
-
- "The Lord of rats and of the mice,
- Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice."
-
-The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zooelatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. "It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of an elephant." The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person's stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the _Dies Caniculuares_ of
-Majolus (Meyer: _Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters_, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.
-
-As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. "Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing." The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, "which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason." Furthermore, it explains why "all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase." Of the millions of
-germs, of which "great creating nature" is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing "any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils," which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. "This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects." The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.
-
-Father Bougeant calls his lucubration "a new system of philosophy"; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII. distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant's ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he "protests too much, methinks." In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.
-
-Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(_fuerchterliche Zauberteufel_). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.
-
-A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-"fish or cacodemons" (_pisces seu cacodemones_), and maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenee on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.
-
-In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls "demonic infection" due to the presence of the _bacillus
-infernalis_ in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of _bacilli infernales_ which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Pere Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.
-
-The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled _Traite des Monitoires_, already mentioned, treats "Of the
-Excellence of Monitories" and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-"one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them."
-
-M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as _post hoc,
-ergo propter hoc_. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which "came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (_i.e._ brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood." Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects "were as long as a man's
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure." Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew's
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of "inch of candle," and anathematized them "in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, "having six wings with two teeth harder than flint"
-and "darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm," laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of _De
-Civitate Dei_ as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.
-
-In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.
-
-The most important portion of M. Bailly's work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (_requeste des
-habitans_), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (_plaidoyer des habitans_), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (_plaidoyer pour les insectes_), the
-replication of the inhabitants (_replique des habitans_), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (_replique du defendeur_), the conclusions of the bishop's
-proctor (_conclusions du procureur episcopal_), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (_sentence du juge d'eglise_), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.
-
-The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:
-
-"Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Caesar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the _Iliad_, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; _nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus_: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers, of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: 'Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.'" The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a "horse-load
-of citations" from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: "The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray."
-
-It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a rhetorical hotchpotch of "matter and
-impertinency mixed" as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.
-
-Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:
-
-"Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(_bestioles_), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.
-
-"Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph _Si quadrupes_, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: _Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret_.
-
-"The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute _De poen. tem. litig._ As regards these animals there is no _causa
-justa litigandi_; they are not bound in any manner, _non tenentur ex
-contractu_, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, _neque ex quasi contractu_, _neque ex
-stipulatione_, _neque ex pacto_, and still less _ex delicto seu quasi_,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.
-
-"Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(_qui ne porte coup_); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing _mal a propos_ or in vain: _Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Now I leave it to you to decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: _cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent_."
-
-The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: _quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet_. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as _extra ecclesiam positio, vel e qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction, as the apostle Paul says: "Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without." _Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est._
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (_quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis_).
-
-A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them "every green herb for meat," a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero's treatise _De
-Officiis_, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (_s'en prendre a Dieu_), who has said: "I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number."
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.
-
-The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. "It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(_d'ores en avant_) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted."
-
-"To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness." The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of "vile and paltry
-vermin." In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs' advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. "But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death."
-
-That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): "Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment," _i.e._ unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-"like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to "send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.
-
-The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.
-
-After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:
-
-"The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (_a la volee_), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it." [This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-"Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."] The bishop's proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. "It is truly a deep sea," he says, "in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (_lettres closes_)." He
-suggests it may be "because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors," and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (_liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium_). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.
-
-After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop's proctor is simply an
-_oratio pro domo_, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.
-
-The official begins by stating the case as that of "The People _versus_
-Locusts," declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-"by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,"
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help and solace. "Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:
-
-"In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere." If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech "Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils," to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially "the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and particularly offensive character." (_Vide_ Appendix B.)
-
-It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical _non sequiturs_ and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediaeval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his _Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble_ (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: "_si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic._" Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(_Traicte des Peines et des Amendes_, p. 250; cf. _Themis Jurisconsulte_,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that "if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed." The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, _lieutenant-criminel au siege
-presidial d'Angers_, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: _Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, a la Memoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimees et aux Contumax_, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (_legales homines_) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that "a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality" could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man's memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.
-
-Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but "in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority," the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who "defended them with great dignity"; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.
-
-In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,[3] which damaged the crops
-"by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow." But "in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress," a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, "to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings."
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvae and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that "a free safe-conduct and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy." (_Vide_
-Appendix C.)
-
-An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his "dearly
-beloved" are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-"with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm" and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by "a common
-prayer from house to house" to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: "Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah's ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case, however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o'clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice." The priest
-then exhorts his "dear children" devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (_Vide_ Appendix D.)
-
-There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger's trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be "utterly intolerable." This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.
-
-The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thuering Fricker
-to prosecute the case: "We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thuering Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (_brucorum_), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479."
-
-The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less "of the
-law's delay" than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: "Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:
-
-"We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. _Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi._"
-The phrase _das si beswaert werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers_ does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be _brutum fulmen_; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, "owing to our sins." Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.
-
-The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah's ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.
-
-Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: "By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God." Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: "O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."
-
-In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza's _Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna_ it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right "does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject." Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.
-
-More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhao, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God's creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an _argumentum ad
-monachum_ by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes'
-_Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes_, etc. Vol. V., Lisboa, 1747.]
-
-About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-"vergifteten Wuermer," and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.
-
-In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Goerres'
-_Historisch-Politische Blaetter_ for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: "If you don't leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof." This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.
-
-The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to "the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature." This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By "fervent
-desire" merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man's body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-"for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute." Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as "doing in the spirit of the will," an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
-"the objectivation of the will." Indeed, Schopenhauer's postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.
-
-It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man's spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by "Augustus Duke and Elector," wherein he commends the
-"Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel Greysser," for
-having "put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God's word and of Christian devotion." But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (_durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege_); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See Appendix E.)
-
-A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on "Conjuring Rats," printed
-in _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_ (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, "Maine, Oct. 31, 1888," and addressed in
-business style to "Messrs. Rats and Co." The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they "can live snug
-and happy" in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use "Rough on Rats." This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.
-
-In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:
-
- "Ratton and mouse,
- Lea' the puir woman's house,
- Gang awa' owre by to 'e mill,
- And there ane and a' ye'll get your fill."
-
-In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:
-
- "A running stream they dare na cross."
-
-In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.
-
-It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or "rhyming" rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in _As you Like It_ Rosalind says in reference to Orlando's verses:
-"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember." Randolph declares:
-
- "My poets
- Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar,
- Rhime 'em to death, as they do rats in Ireland."
-
-Ben Jonson is still more specific:
-
- "Rhime 'em to death, as they do Irish rats,
- In drumming tunes."
-
-From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.
-
-In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(_la Fete des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:
-
- "Sortez, sortez d'ici, mulots!
- Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
- Quittez, quittez ces bles!
- Allez, vous trouverez
- Dans la cave du cure
- Plus a boire qu'a manger."
-
-The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:
-
- "Taupes et mulots,
- Sors de mon clos,
- Ou je te casse les os;
- Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
- Je te brule la barbe jusqu'aux os."
-
-The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of "Callithumpian" music.
-
-Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Eveques du Mans_, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.)
-
-The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled [Greek: ta
-geoponika] and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by
-the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is
-given for getting rid of field-mice:
-
-"Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces." The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopaedia chiefly from the "Geoponics"
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee's letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.
-
-In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: "In yonder
-village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)"; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebraeuche aus Thueringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ's death and the world's
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
-
- "Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
- Protect this house and burn the rest."
-
-Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D'Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_
-Appendix F for a still fuller list.)
-
-The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyoe in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (_Amira_, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.
-
-Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of "Phelippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens," for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-"having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (_etoit alle de vie a trepas_)." In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-"buried all alive" (_enfoui tout vif_), "for having devoured a little
-child in l'hostel de la Couronne." Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, "on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,"
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Wuertemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-"powerful medicine" to stay the epizooetic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.
-
-Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (_L'Homme et la Bete._ Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that "the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt," is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. "The question," which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.
-
-In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Genevieve. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man's
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a "master of high works" (_maitre des hautes oeuvres_), as he
-was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
-
-We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinite_) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l'Abbe Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbe states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, _la chasse de la banniere_ (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
-
-In 1394, a pig was found guilty of "having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff." The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of "fifty souls
-tournois." (_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:
-
- "Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
- perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
- bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
- sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.
-
- "Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis."
-
-This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-"in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403." (See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.
-
-Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus "Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche," acknowledges the
-receipt, "through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (_vicomte_) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king's bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison." The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with "Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July," when it was hanged "for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child" (_pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant_). For the pig's board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account "ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape." The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by "Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche." (_Vide_ Appendix J.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged "until death ensueth," for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d'Or,
-was left hanging "for a long space" on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: _Histoire de Saint-Omer_, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Chalons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: _dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum_. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: _De poena bruti
-delinquentis_. Lugduni, MDCX.)
-
-On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become _participes criminis_,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (_Vide_
-Appendix K.)
-
-A peculiar custom is referred to in the _proces verbal_ of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be "hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet." The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. "From time immemorial," we are told, "the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked." The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.
-
- "'Twill be recorded for a precedent;
- And many an error, by the same example
- Will rush into the state: it cannot be."
-
-In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediaeval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, "assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice." Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter's child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there "hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city." For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.
-
-Buggery (_offensa cujus nominatio crimen est_, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (_punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur_), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad, a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be "hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted." A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (_assommee_) by the executioner of high justice and
-"the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes." It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (_Vide_ Appendix L.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his _Ordre
-Judiciaire_, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(_multoties_) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-_Magnalia Christi Americana_ (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that "on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities." He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, "devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people." Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, "lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret." He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wuenschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined that in
-burning the bodies the man's should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-"who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare," was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.
-
-For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive "together with the minutes of
-the trial;" his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master's crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore "they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature." This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by "Pintuel Prieur Cure" and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.
-
-The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire "according to common custom"
-("_so ein_ Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten." Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his _Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium_ (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that "if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(_Caviller oder Feldmeister_)." The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. "If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated, then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby" [Jacobi Doepleri,
-_Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen_, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]
-
-All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediaeval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: "Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live." In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, _gravius_ and _gravissimum_; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Doepler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the _peccatum gravissimum_; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.
-
-It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boer (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, "since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog" (Doepl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, "inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts."
-
-But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of "murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny," and sentenced to be "hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esprone_)." Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but "in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother's crime." Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit "on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin," the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the _proces verbal_ has been preserved. (See
-Appendix M.)
-
-Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, "on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts." The pig was condemned to be "hanged and
-executed by justice." The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
-
-According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.
-
-On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having "strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife," and
-proceeded against "as justice and reason would desire and require."
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified "on their oath and
-conscience" that "on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (_de ce siecle trepassa_)." The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, "We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin." The crime was committed "on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants," and the
-prosecution was conducted by "Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place." The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)
-
-In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff's declaration that the pig killed the child and ate of its
-flesh, "although it was Friday," and this violation of the _jejunium
-sextae_, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker's
-offence.
-
-Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trocheres, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place "under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells." It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediaeval courts, the chronicles of mediaeval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediaeval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare's day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano's invective against Shylock:
-
- "thy currish spirit
- Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
- Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
- And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
- Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
- Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous."
-
-That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its aesthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the "good old
-times" of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.
-
-The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediaeval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D'Addosio, _Bestie
-Delinquenti_, pp. 23-5).
-
-In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left "such beasts without a good and sure guard." Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, "a sow with a black snout," "for
-the cruelty and ferocity" shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having "eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant," was condemned to be "exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis." The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (_Vide_
-Appendix P.)
-
-But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.
-
-There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed "for its demerits." Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupre near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be "executed until death
-inclusively," for having "killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont," who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean Boullet. (_Vide_ Appendix Q.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.
-
-In 1474, the magistrates of Bale sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake "for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg." The _auto da
-fe_ was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his _Kurze Basler Chronik_, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Praettigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bale.
-
-The _oeuf coquatri_ was supposed to be the product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and "death-darting eye" destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled "Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l'on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,"
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon's egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling "a small serpent coiled." He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like "a hoarse cock" (_un coq
-enroue_), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(_Memoires de l'Academie de Sciences._ Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)
-
-A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock [Greek: epteinaria], a name
-which would imply some sort of winged creature. It was "sighted like the
-basilisk," and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal
-qualities.
-
-In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that "it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet" (Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, Sec. 197 in Giraud:
-_Essai sur l'Histoire du Droit Francais_, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.
-
-Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his "appearing invisibly at times" (_aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens_), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts--snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.
-
-It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to "close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue." Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L'Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, _pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins_, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin's
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See Appendix R.)
-
-_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man's dealings
-with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded "life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that "whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart." ["Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt." Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God's method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.
-
-In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only "at the hand of man," but also "at the hand of every
-beast;" and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that "if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher's meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.
-
-On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621, should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried "unflayed." In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (_Vide_ Appendix S.)
-
-In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (_geistlicher Convent_) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Tuerler's _Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern_ (_Zeitschrift fuer schweiz._ _Strafrecht_, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: "In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference _a bove ad hominem_.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God commanded that the
-'goring ox' should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man's
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment." The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.
-
-The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to each
-other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakon and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikon of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called [Greek:
-apsychon dikai] (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted
-before the Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to
-by AEschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly
-described in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux and the _Lexicon Decem
-Oratorum Graecorum_ of Valerius Harpokration.
-
-Strictly speaking, the term [Greek: apsychon] should be applied only to an
-inanimate object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called
-[Greek: aphonon] (dumb); but this distinction was not always observed
-either in common parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point
-as formulated and expounded by Plato (_De Leg._, IX. 12) was as follows:
-"If a draught animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a
-combat authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain
-shall prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the
-public lands ([Greek: agronomoi]), as many as may be commissioned by the
-said kinsmen, shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond
-the boundaries of the country ([Greek: exorizein], exterminate in the
-literal and original sense of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive
-a person of life, provided it may not be a thunderbolt ([Greek: keraunos])
-or other missile ([Greek: belos]) hurled by a god, but an object which the
-said person may have run against or by which he may have been struck and
-slain, then the kinsman immediate to the deceased shall appoint the
-nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify himself as well as his next
-of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit ([Greek: to ophlon]) shall
-be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it were an animal."
-In the same section it is enacted that if a person be found dead and the
-murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by a herald on the
-market-place forbidding the murderer to enter any sanctuary or the land
-of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he shall be put to death
-and his body be thrown unburied beyond the boundaries of the country of
-the person killed. The object of these measures was to appease the Erinnys
-or avenging spirit of the deceased, and to avert the calamities which
-would otherwise be brought upon the land, in accordance with the strict
-law of retribution demanding blood for blood, no matter whether it may
-have been shed wilfully or accidentally. [Cf. AEschylus, _Cho._, 395, where
-this law ([Greek: nomos]) is clearly and strongly affirmed.] The same
-superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage tribes to beg
-pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and to purify
-themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an act, the
-[Greek: miasma] of murder, as the Greeks called it.
-
-Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and "amid the loud execrations of
-the masses," who seem in their excitement to have "lost their heads" as
-well as the hapless deities.
-
-When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
-
-Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his _Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae_, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer's dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year's
-incarceration in the Narrenkoetterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkoetterlein,
-Narrenkoederl or Kotter formerly on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as "Menschenkaefige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Poebels preiszugeben (zu
-narren)." Schlaeger: _Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter_, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were "by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death." It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.
-
-On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be "punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence" (_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation,
-corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning
-with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and
-ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is
-wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to "wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man." On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.
-
-A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy's approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (_peah
-hit nafre metes ne abite_), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-_Schwabenspiegel_, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. ["Man soll
-allez daz toetden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre." Sec. 290.]
-
-Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as "severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children." Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: "As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release."
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.
-
-The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, "according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country." The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.
-
-When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also "his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,"
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth "the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;" or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children's teeth were to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul's sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Bluecher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.
-
-According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked "corruption of blood" in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.
-
-The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: _Schles. Chron._, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (_constitutio criminalis
-Carolina_), although in many respects an advance on mediaeval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Doepler (_Theat. Poen._, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.
-
-According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the "sacra saxa," by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the _motio termini_ or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.
-
-That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.
-
-For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that "the stranger
-within their gates" is their legitimate spoil, and has no other _raison
-d'etre_. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.
-
-The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. "If a horse," says Blackstone, "or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand." If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.
-
-_Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man's death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who "by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken." "And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor."
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homoepathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer's hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months' imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.
-
-In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes--_pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum_--but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lueneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (_Vide_ Kraut's _Stadtrecht
-von Lueneburg_, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)
-
-Blackstone's theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the _Commentaries_ could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were "designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death," are equally
-incorrect. In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.
-
-Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a _felo de se_ as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of "the
-mad Ajax," who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.
-
-It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.
-
-Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
-
-A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.
-
-Mediaeval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: _Si duo faciunt idem non est idem_ (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner's sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade's prescription of "hempen
-caudle" and "pap of hatchet" as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.
-
-Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster's features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave's cabinet of curiosities as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.
-
-In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: "You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk." At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, "he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased."
-
-Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter's wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-_auto da fe_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
-
-Doepler cites also the case of Stephen Huebner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
-
-In 1573, the parliament of Dole published a decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comte to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; "notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase," the people were empowered to "assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty." The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children "even on Friday." The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a _jour maigre_.
-
-Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas a Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.
-
-When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter's, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body "as a pestilential thing"
-(_uti quoddam mephiticum_) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.
-
-From the standpoint of ancient and mediaeval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediaeval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homoeopenal principle of _similia similibus
-puniantur_, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.
-
-Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Buechner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillee, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If "privation of mind" and "irresistible force," says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then "partial vitiation of mind" and "semi-irresistible
-force" are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. "Partial vitiation of mind" is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a "semi-irresistible force." But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-"absolute privation of mind" and "wholly irresistible force;" and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.
-
-The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.
-
-Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediaeval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.
-
-But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category "all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity," and "all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired."
-In order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.
-
-A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of "moral insanity" in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as "moral
-insanity" exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.
-
-Mediaeval penal justice sought to inflict the greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger's daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-"Malefiz-Gericht" or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,
-
- "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,"
-
-was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: "I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order." A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.
-
-Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called "Blue Laws" of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own "stubborn and rebellious sons," or upon persons who "worship
-any other God but the Lord God," had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.
-
-If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediaeval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.
-
-A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.
-
-This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a "kind of
-menagerie"; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-"there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed." In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.
-
-Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the aesthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.
-
-It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: "Have ye a government here?" and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, "Then I'm agin' it." Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine's definition of man as "an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb," applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race, temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.
-
-The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palaeolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.
-
-In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta's brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men's hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.
-
-Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the _argumentum ad hominem_ in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the "Hottentot Venus," examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.
-
-"The more advanced criminalists," says Professor Von Kirchenheim, "are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles." In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal, whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years' imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal. Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediaeval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: _Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur_. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo's metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.
-
-Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-"education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts," and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to "deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (_recidivistes_) together with their posterity," and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.
-
-Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the _force majeure_
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man's character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another, ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man's
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.
-
-As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediaeval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediaeval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man's will upon another man's mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God's special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.
-
-One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,--some
-point at which we are forced to say,--
-
- "O, that way madness lies; let me shun that."
-
-It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.
-
-A madman, says Coleridge, is one who "mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things." But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who "of imagination all compact," takes his fancies for
-realities,
-
- "Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
- A local habitation and a name."
-
-Coleridge's definition includes also the mythopoeic faculty, the power of
-projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.
-
-An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediaeval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-"an effect," says Morselli, "of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples." What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.
-
-An additional reflection, that "must give us pause" in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.
-
-Mediaeval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.
-
-It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man's free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch of a deity "willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known," no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions--the original sin of the theologians--and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the "election of grace" is by no means identical with salvation
-through the "survival of the fittest." The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as "the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory," may be and probably is "as filthy rags"; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. "The best man,"
-said Socrates, "is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself." This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.
-
-Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (_Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zooepsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of "showing off" play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls "that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob." It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.
-
-If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediaeval courts against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zooepsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.
-
-Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted _quia
-peccatum est_ or _ne peccetur_; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as "ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them." Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.
-
-The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
-
- "the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
-
-If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.
-
-Schopenhauer maintained the theory of "responsibility for character," and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person's character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-"dives" haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.
-
-A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the _causes celebres_ of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in _The Nation_ for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel _Le Comte de Monte Christo_, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.
-
-In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in "_l'espece de volupte qu'elle
-eprouverait a commettre un crime_," or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called "pure cussedness." Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.
-
-Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours' deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances," as the
-result of which the accused was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.
-
-After fifteen years' imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer's ethics, that "a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character," what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal's individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.
-
-There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological material
-which her profession placed in her hands?
-
-However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as "much delight" as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals "shrieking and
-groaning" on his tormentatore. "The physiologist," says Claude Bernard,
-"is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover." Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.
-
-The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that "there's
-method in it," is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.
-
-According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has "such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong." This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no "defect of reason" nor "disease of mind" in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater "defect of reason" in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-"certifiably insane" persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.
-
-It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-_Salus socialis suprema lex esto._ Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.
-
-The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.
-
-If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the partially
-insane, especially those affected with "moral insanity" or so-called
-"cranks," have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.
-
-From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso's assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani
-matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.
-
-That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-_cujus poenae metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in
-riding from Cologne towards Dueren, he and his companions saw in the vast
-forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves,
-as a warning to the rest of the pack: "Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram
-versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non
-secus quam duos latrones, furcae suspensos; _quo similis poenae formidine a
-maleficio reliqui deterreantur_." In like manner the American farmer sets
-up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add
-that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral
-character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority
-to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and
-original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta saepe ratione utantur melius
-homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naude at Paris in 1648; an
-enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a
-dissertation on the soul in animals.
-
-In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the
-Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiene de l'esprit_, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe's
-_Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Freres_, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurelien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military _attache_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles' department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysees, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-_Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le
-Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang's story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.
-
-That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.
-
-The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender's mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediaeval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
-
-
-A
-
-TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM
-
-Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO
-
-Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente _Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio_ signatum _Franciscus Faeti_ contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (_sic_) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata _Romaneti_ qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI EPISCOPATUS MAURIANAE
-
-Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani caeterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et caetera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinae potentiae virtute praecibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinae
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.
-
-Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum praecedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-caeterasque formalitates ad haec opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinae clementiae et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.
-
- FRAN. FAETI
-
-Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R{di} generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.
-
- ROMANET
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.
-
-Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (_sic_) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... _Deus
-Deus qui contritorum_ et _A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis_ etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis _Qui
-contritorum_ et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-_Veni Creator Spiritus_ quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto _Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur_ etc. cum orationibus _Deus qui corda
-fidelium_ singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Vic.{s} et Off.{s} gen.{lis} Maurianne.
-
- FAURE
-
-Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.
-
-(_locus sigilli._)
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam _Rembaud_ producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-_Approbando_ etc. signatam _Rembaud_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULE
-
-Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam _Claudius Morellus_
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quae impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciae _cap. primo_ et ibi Gr. _De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib._ 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram_
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi _Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo_ quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturae primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturae vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus _actus activorum non operantur in patienti_ ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia Sec. _Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili._ ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturae dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi _Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium_ non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et aequitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur _Qui seminat metet_ ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. _In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum_ non tamen cequitur (_sic_) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quae sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et poenitentiam agat exemplo
-Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter poenitentiam
-egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3. veniat populus et
-imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua sancta gratia et
-per merita sanctissimae passionis excessum dictorum Animalium compessere
-et refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e vineis ejicient et non
-eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis consideratis evidentissime patet
-dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis ejicienda non esse attento quod solo
-instinctu naturae vivunt et ita per egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem
-Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum
-monitorium requisitum in quantum concernit dicta Animalia revocari et
-annullari nec aliquo modo consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis
-concedatur nec etiam aliqui visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per
-Agentes in eorum supplicatione protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni
-meliori modo via jure ac forma salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac
-deffentionibus competentibus aut competituris humiliter implorato benigno
-officio judicis.
-
- PETRUS REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem _Etiam si cuncta_ et signatam
-_Franciscus Fay_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.
-
-Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulae cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam _Fay_ dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULAE
-
-Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in I.
-par. q. 26. ar. I. et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut coeteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in
-aequitate et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum
-creaturarum habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa
-bruta animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.
-
-Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.
-
- FRANC FAETI
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem _Licet multis_
-signatam _Rembaudi_ dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULAE
-
-Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut caeteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et praesertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturae
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (_sic_) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. I. dist. I. at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata _Fran: Faeti._ nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulae parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: _P. Rembaudus._ ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suoe cedule et fieri recuisitis inhoerendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.
-
- P. REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum _Prunier_ adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiae vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariae et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.
-
-Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN
-
-Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.
-
-Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Francys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au conseil general suyvant la publication d'icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu'il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantite a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.
-
- L. PRUMIER
- _curial_
-
-MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-ALIA CONTINUATIO
-
-Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE AD JUS
-
-Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA
-
-_contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis
-Supplicata_
-
-Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori--cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente _Ut appareat_
-etc. signata _Claudius Morellus_--tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium--tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati _Daprilis_--ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni--testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis _Daprili_--cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente _Visitatio_ et signata _Claudius
-Morellus_--allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente _Etsi
-rationes_ etc. signata _Petrus de Collo_--tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis--memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587--ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis--supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata _Franciscus Faeti_--litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis--attestatione signata
-_Romanet_ sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii--cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente _Approbando_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata _Franciscus
-Faeti_ incipiente _Etiam si cuncta_ etc.--allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente _Licet multis_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi--testimonialibus signatis _Prunier_ sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium--memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi--ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.
-
-Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum
-super statu
-
- loci oblati p....
- quem locum....
- visitandum....
- mensem ut f....
- et nobis rem....
- fuerit provid....
- Mermetus vis....
- generalis....
- in civitate S....
- die decima....
- anno domini....
- octuagesimo sep....
- Petremandi Bertr....
- dictorum Scind....
- et egregii....
- dictorum Animal.
- ordinationem....
- acceptandum....
- facit die et....
-
-(pro visitatione III flor)
-
-_locus sigilli._
-
-Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.
-
-Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor--20 decembre 1587.
-
-Published by Leon Menebrea in the appendix to his treatise: _De l'Origine,
-de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-age contre les
-Animaux_, Chambery, 1846. Cf. _Memoires de la Societe Royale Academique de
-Savoie_, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.
-
- * * * * *
-
-According to M. J. Desnoyers (_Recherches sur la coutume d'exorciser et
-d'excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles a l'agriculture_,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.
-
-The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d'Eynatten, in
-his _Manuale Exorcismorum_, is as follows:--"Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem [+], et per Jesum Christum
-[+] filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum [+] ab utroque
-procedentem, ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis,
-aquis, si Dei providentia adhuc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis
-habitetis, sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis
-nocere poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhuc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.--Amen." _Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae_, 1626, p. 1204.
-
-
-B
-
-II[4]
-
-DE L'EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES
-
-PAR GASPARD BAILLY
-
-Il ne favt pas mepriser les Monitoires, veu que c'est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l'Eglise se sert, qui est l'Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n'epargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s'attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont frequens,
-pour preuue de cette verite. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu'on a
-excommunie les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeissans aux commandemens de l'Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonne par la sentence de l'Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur proces. Au Siecle passe, il y auoit telle quantite
-d'Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu'elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent a l'Euesque pour
-les Excommunier, ce qu'ayant este fait, le Lac fut deliure de ces
-animaux.
-
-Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantite de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu'elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantouean, si on n'y eut apporte du secours par
-l'Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblemes, sous
-l'intitulation _nihil reliqui_.
-
- _Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,
- Locustae vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.
- Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;
- Qualia non Athilae, Castrave Cersis erant.
- Hae faenum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;
- Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super._
-
-On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu'il se leua vne si grande quantite
-de Mouches, d'vne Eglise qu'on auoit basti a Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu'elles faisoient, elles empechoient a ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu'elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paue de l'Eglise.
-
-Nous lisons qu'en l'annee 1541, il y eut vne telle quantite de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d'vne nuee; qu'ayant mange les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d'vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l'Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.
-
-On dit aussi qu'en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantite de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu'ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d'vne coudee d'auteur, et tellement epaisses qu'en volant
-elles leuoient la veuee de la clarte du Soleil, ces animaux firent un
-degat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chasses par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.
-
-Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cite de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu'en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantite de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu'ayans mange tous les fruits, feueiles, et ecorces des arbres iusques a
-la racine, elles s'eleuerent comme vne nuee; et tombees en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu'en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.
-
-Du temps de Lotaire troisieme Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, ble, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans este jettes a la Mer; il s'ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l'Air, que la peste rauageat grande quantite de monde en ce pays la. Voila
-quantite d'exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur proces
-afin de s'en garantir par le moyen de la malediction que leur donne
-l'Eglise.
-
-Premierement, sur la Requeste presentee par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le degat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportee, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur a ses bestioles pour se presenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et la deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, ou
-elles estoient, et les raisons veues et considerees, d'vne part et d'autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.
-
-_Requeste des Habitans_
-
-Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantite
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-bles, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel degat aux bles,
-et raisins qu'ils n'y laissent rien, d'ou les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommee par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.
-
-Qui les fait recourir a la Bonte, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, a ce
-qu'il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu'il a pleu a Dieu d'enuoyer pour l'entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.
-
-_Plaidoyer des Habitans_
-
-Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont a genouy les larmes a l'oeil,
-recourent a votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aues des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessite de laquelle ils
-sont menaces, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n'epargnent ny
-ble, ny vignes; rauage semblable a celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoye par Themis a Thebes, qui n'epargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous scauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aues trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint a s'abandonner a des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, _nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla aeequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus_: Temoins les Meres
-dont il est parle au quatrieme des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l'une de l'autre. _Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur._ La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu'elle est pleine
-de langueurs, debilites et foiblesses de coeur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.
-
- _Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,
- At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longe est._
-
-Et Auian Marcellin dit, _Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire_. Ie crois que vous aures compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l'estat qu'il serait reduit si la faim
-l'accabloit.
-
- _Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,
- Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.
- Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.
- Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;
- Ventus erat, pro ventre locus._
-
-Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d'habits dechires, et des visages affames, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitie et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iouse, et en cet estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.
-
-Les Informations et visites qui ont este faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du degat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalites requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d'adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de faire reflection, et a cet effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnees en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnees par nostre Mere Sainte
-l'Eglise, a quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.
-
-_Plaidoyer pour les Insectes_
-
-Messievrs, depuis que vous m'aues choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalites, qu'on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m'etonnant fort
-de la facon qu'on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du degat qu'on
-pretend qu'elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on scait qu'elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer a ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu'elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberte de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.
-
-Qve l'adiovrnement laxe contr'elles est nul comme laxe contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu'on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans priues
-de cette lumiere qui a este donnee au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tire de la
-Loi premieree, _ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat_; et voyci les
-mots. _Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret._
-
-La seconde raison est, que l'on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu'vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portee sous le tiltre des instituts _de poen. tem.
-litig._ Mais ces animaux ne sont obliges par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-facon, _non tenentur enim ex contractu_, estans incapables de contracter,
-_neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto_, moins
-_ex delicto, seu quasi_; parce que comme il a este dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priues de son vsage.
-
-De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal a propos, _Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Je
-laisse a penser quest-ce qu'on pretend de faire ayant adjourne ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuees de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l'adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister _cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae
-consequuntur locum habent_.
-
-On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict, et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu'il est vray lors qu'il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, _In administratione suae
-iurisdictionis_, mais non pas en ce cas, ou la partie n'en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est decide par la glose
-de la Loy 2 _ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent_, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite a propos L'axiaume qui dit _quod directe fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus_. Mais ce que je treuue plus
-estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d'Excommunication, d'Anathema et malediction, et a quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l'Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne chatie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peche, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d'auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu'il faut suiure, et ce qu'il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberte de prendre l'vn et laisser l'autre.
-
-On vovdra peut-estre dire qu'elles ont manque en ce qu'elles ne se sont
-presentees ayant este adjurnees, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-a cause de leur desobeissance: Mais a cela on respond qu'il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n'y a point d'adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-_quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitime citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo_, etc.
-
-De plus, si on prend garde a la definition de l'Excommunication, on verra
-qu'on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l'Excommunication est dite _extra Ecclesiam positio, vel e qualibet
-communione, vel e quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechasses de l'Eglise, n'y ayans jamais este,
-d'autant qu'elle est pour les hommes qui ont l'ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doueees d'aucune raison, et l'Apostre S. Paul
-_ad Corinth._ 5 dit _quod de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus_, l'Excommunication
-_afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est_, cap. 1, _de sentent. Excomm. in 6._ C'est pourquoy l'ame de ces
-animaux, n'estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchee par telle
-Sentence, _quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis_.
-
-L'autre raison est, _quod facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licet consecutiuum sit repugnans statui_ suo cap. _de
-occidendis_ 23 q. 5 cap. _sicut dignum extra de homicid_. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-_fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum_. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont este faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d'en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Ciceron dit
-au premier des Offices _principio generi omnium animantium est a natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant_. Par ces raison on voit qu'ils n'ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, _cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quod secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minus erit licitum homini_, veu qu'on lit dans l'Epistre de S. Iude, _cum
-altercaretur Michael cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere_ Cap. _Si igitur Michael_, 23. _q._ 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. _q._ 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s'est peche de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considerans en eux mesmes, _est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum_.
-
-Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous fera
-donner les mains, et persuadera a vostre Esprit, qu'on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d'Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononcant telle Sentence s'est s'en pendre a Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs peches, _immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant_, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge _omnis Caro corrupit viam suam_. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissee, exilee, et
-reduite en tel estat qu'elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.
-
- _Protinus irrupit venae prioris in aeuum,
- Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verumque fidesque,
- In quorum subiere locum, fraudesque, dolusque.
- Insidiaeque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,
- Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,
- Non socer a genero, fratrum quoque gratia rara est,
- Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti
- Liuida terribiles miscent aconitae nouercae
- Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,
- Uita iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentes.
- Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit._
-
-Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Proces, a quoy on
-conclud.
-
-_Replique des Habitans_
-
-Le principal motif qu'on a rapporte pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu'estans priues de l'vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis a aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre _cum mulier_ 1. 5. q. l. la _l. congruit
-in fin_. et la Loix suiuante. _ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis._ Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se presente maintenant a juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d'vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d'empescher
-qu'ils n'en commettent par cy-apres, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-a vn crime commis, et permis afin d'empescher _ne crimen committatur_.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy _congruit_ sus cite, ou il est dit qu'on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insense du crime qu'il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu'il ne scait ce qu'il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu'il n'offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cet Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l'authorite du Chapitre _omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss._ ou il est dit qu'on peut
-deceller ce qu'on a pris si on ne la pas execute, afin d'y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmee par la glose _in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal._ qui dit qui si quelqu'vn s'accuse d'auoir Fiance une fille,
-par parolles de present; on pourra deceller ce qui a este dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu'ayant espouse telle fille, si on nie
-de l'auoir fait, et on refuse d'accomplir le Mariage, _Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur_. Il este loisible de publier ce qu'on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu'on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l'adjournement est valable, d'autant qu'il est fait
-afin qu'ils ne rapportent du dommage d'ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu'ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre a ce
-qu'on a aduance a scauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommunies,
-Anathematises, maudis ny execres; a cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donne a l'Eglise, l'ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l'Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, _omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quae
-mouentur in aquis_, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s'il y a chose ou elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c'est a la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; a scauoir de l'Homme,
-qu'il a fait a son Image et semblance, _faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram_ et luy a donne le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crees _crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus coeli, et omnibus animantibus Coeli_; Aussi Pline en son Liure
-premier de l'Histoire naturelle dit _quod causa hominis, videtur cuncta
-alia genuisse natura_. Les Jurisconsultes sont d'accord, _quod hominis
-gratia, omnes fructus a natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de vsur. et
-Sec.. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis._ et Ouide descriuant
-l'excellence de l'Homme parle de la sorte,
-
- _Pronaque, cum spectent animalia caeetera terras
- Os homini sublime dedit, caelumque tueri
- Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
-
-et vn autre Poete,
-
- _Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus
- Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.
- Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,
- Segnem, atque obscaenam, passuri strauisset in aluum._
-
-Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l'Homme dit _hominem tantoe excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimode, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo vero, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quam in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aer, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturoe suoe, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos videmus,
-hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc Terra, et
-Elementa, huic bruta praeesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat caelum, hinc
-salutem bonumque procurant Angelicoe mentes_.
-
-Et se seroit vne chose, si j'ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priue, et que de chetifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, a l'exclusion de l'Homme pour qui ils sont
-destines de Dieu. C'est sur ce sujet qu'il dit _Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodo posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea_.
-
-Et pour responce a ce qu'escrit S. Thomas qu'il n'est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu'en l'espece
-qu'on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et detruisans les fruits qui
-seruent a son soutient, et nourriture.
-
-Mais a quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu'on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantite de saints Personnages, ont Excommunie des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d'en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons continuellement, a
-scauoir dans la ville d'Aix, ou S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantite a cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d'Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu'vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arreste, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu'vn est pique hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu'on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse a part quantite de passages de l'Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donne des maledictions aux choses inanimees, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu'on pourra voir au _Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2._ il maudit le Serpent _Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terrae_.
-
-De dire, qu'excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s'est s'en prendre
-a Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n'est pas s'ens prendre a Dieu que de recourir a l'Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu'il a pleu a sa Diuine Majeste de
-nous enuoyer, a cause de nos fautes et peches; au contraire c'est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir a elle, lors q'on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.
-
-_Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal_
-
-Les defenses rapportees par l'Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu'on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d'Excommunication a la volee, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si
-agissant, que s'il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cet Aduocat est appuye sur la regle de
-Droict, qui dit, _qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, poenam non meretur_, et
-vrayement c'est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d'impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines a l'egal des offences, sans auoir egard a personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, _quam abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viae ejus_. C'est vne Mer profonde d'ont on ne peut
-decouurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoye ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient a leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.
-
-Ceux qui donnent l'aumosne sont toujours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit _non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri_, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l'aumone aux pauures, _si non pauisti necasti, pascendo seruare
-poteras_, de mesmes la Loy _de lib. agnoscend._ repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens a ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinee a ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, _qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vita viuet_; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusebe expliche de la sorte, _fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium_.
-
-C'est vn acte de Charite, que d'assister le pauures, _frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri_, dit Iosue c. 38. aussi la
-recompense est asseuree, ainsi qu'escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. _venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis_.
-C'est vne oeuure de Misericorde d'auuoir compassion de son prochain, ainsi
-que dit S. Ambroise _lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiae, vt
-compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum possumus
-iuvemus, et plus interdum quam possumus_ l'Hospitalite est recommandee par
-S. Paul _hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim placuerunt quidam,
-Angelis hospitio receptis_, et S. Augustin _disce Christiane sine
-discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne forte cui domum clauseris, cui
-humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus_. L'ordinaire recompence qui suit
-l'aumosne est le centuple, _honora Dominum de tua substantia, et de
-primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et implebuntur horrea
-tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt_. Les abismes de la
-Diuinite ne s'epuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage Salomon, _faeneratur
-Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam reddet_. S. Paul aux
-Corinthiens Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, _qui administrat semen seminanti,
-et panem ad manducandum praestabit, et multiplicabit semen suum_.
-
-Seroit-ce point a cause des irreuerences qu'on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun egard a la presence de Dieu, _conduntur
-stupra, tractantur lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentius denique;
-in aedituorum cellulis quod in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur_, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c'est la bien souuent ou se
-donne le mot, ou se prennent les assignations, ou se lancent les
-meschantes oeilliades, _Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius_,
-dit S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en AEgypte,
-le peche etait consacre a Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu'on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peche ressemble au coeur, et
-la feuille a la langue, inferant de la que ceux qui allaient aux Temples,
-deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.
-
-Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu'on assistat au culte Diuin par maniere
-d'aquit: Mais qu'en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entierement sa
-pensee, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d'actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu'on entendit parmy les
-Rues aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l'on se tue,
-laissant toute autre oeuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.
-
-Que si les Payens ont este si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinites, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.
-
-Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n'y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s'il enuoit quelques aduersites aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouet: C'est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent detourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et peches.
-
-Nous voyons ces habitans la larme a l'oeil, qui demandent pardon d'vn
-coeur contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le
-passe, et employent l'assistance de l'Eglise pour les soulager en leurs
-necessites, et detourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans
-menaces d'vne famine insuportable si vous ne prenes leur droit, et cause
-en protection, et faire deloger ces animaux, qui les menacent d'vne ruine
-totale, a quoy nous n'empeschons.
-
-Concluans a cet effect, qu'il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d'execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d'ores en auant ils n'apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, a ce conuenables et accoustumees.
-
-_La Sentence du Iuge d'Eglise_
-
-In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci a certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, a territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visa certa informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.
-
-Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordia, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.
-
-In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub poenis
-Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infra sex dies, a Monitione in
-vim sententiae huius, a vineis, et territoriis huius loci discedant,
-nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod si infra
-praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districte praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradus, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt facilius ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenus bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulo abstineant.
-
-
-C
-
-Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.
-
-KLAG
-
-Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmaeuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schaedliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schaedliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben koennten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wuessten zu
-ernehren.
-
-ANTWORT
-
-Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-maenniglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewoehr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei----: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewoehr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen muessten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten moegen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-waere, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fuerbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen moege.
-
-URTEL
-
-Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was fuer Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schaedlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmaeuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmaeder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger waer, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen moechte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen moegen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch fuer die vaterlaendische Geschichte_. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.
-
-
-D
-
-Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.
-
-Du vnvernuenfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernuefftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ soemlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshaech/ so hat mir mein gnaediger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erloesers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. naechsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gaerten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Baeumen/ Krueteren/ vnd von allen oerteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd staetteuch fuegend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen moegen an den fruechten vnd nahrungen der Menschen vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfuellen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fuersprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnaedigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnaediger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fuerer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verfluechen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebuert/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begaeren von ewerem jeglichen zu
-baetten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerueffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.
-
-Job. Heinrich Hottinger: _Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti_ iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling's _Chronica_, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.
-
-
-E
-
-Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.
-
-Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfuerst.--Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-wuerdige, Unser lieber andaechtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner naechst getanen Predigt, ueber die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhoerlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und aergerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und maenniglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.
-
-Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhoerer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevoegel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,--dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden moege nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil--ist demnach unser gnaediges Begehren--zu eroeffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behaendigkeit und Wege, du fuer gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-taegliche und unaufhoerliche Unkeuschheit unzaehlich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-aergerliche Voeglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkuemmert werden moege.... Das gereicht zur Befoerderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnaedige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.--Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch, etc._, 1845, pp. 227-8.
-
-
-F
-
-Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.[5]
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Sources of Information | Dates | Animals | Places
- ----------------------------+-------+-------------+---------------------
- Annales Ecclesiastici | 824 |Moles |Valley of Aosta
- Francorum | | |
- | | |
- Muratori: Rer. Ital. | 886 |Locusts |Roman Campagna
- Scriptores, iii | | |
- | | |
- Gaspard Bailly: | 9th |Serpents |Aix-les-Bains
- Traite des Monitoires | cent. | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, | 1120 |Field-mice |Laon
- p. 97, Memoires de la | |and |
- Societe Royale des | |Caterpillars |
- Antiquaires de France, | | |
- viii, p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Theophile Raynaud: De | 1121 |Flies |Foigny near Laon
- Monitoriis in Opusc. | | |
- missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 415. Note, Vita S. | | |
- Bernhardi, i, No. 58. | 1121 |Horseflies |Mayence
- Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272| | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1225 |Eels |Lausanne
- | | |
- L'Abbe Leboeuf: Hist. de | 1266 |Pig |Fontenay-aux-Roses
- Paris, ix, p. 400. | | | near Paris
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres | 1314 |Bull |Moiey-le-Temple
- Themis, viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1320 |Cockchafers |Avignon
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1322 | |Not Specified
- _vide_ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1323 | |Abbeville
- Both cited by Von Amira, | | |
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Zeitschrift fuer deutsche | 1338 | |Kaltern
- Kulturgeschichte, ii, p. | | |
- 544; also Germania, iv, | | |
- p. 383. Von Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Delisle: Etudes sur la | 1356 |Pig |Caen
- condition de la classe | | |
- agricole, p. 107. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange. | 1378 | |Abbeville
- _Vide_ homicida. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Societes | 1379 |Three sows |Saint-Marcel
- Savantes, Dec. 1866, pp. | |and a pig. | les-Jussey
- 476, _sqq._ From the | |Rest of the |
- archives of Cote-d'Or | |two herds |
- | | pardoned |
- | | |
- Charange: Dict. des Titres | 1386 |Sow |Falaise
- Originaux, ii, p. 72. | | |
- _Also_ statistique de | | |
- Falaise, i, p. 63. | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1389 |Horse |Dijon
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1394 |Pig |Mortaing
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 427. From MSS. in la | | |
- Bibliotheque du Roi | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 14th |Spanish flies|Mayence
- Tract. ii, Memoires, | cent. | |
- cit., viii, p. 411 | | |
- | | |
- MS. of Judge Herisson, | 1403 |Sow |Meulan
- published by Lejeune in | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 433; _also_ Loriol: | | |
- La France Eure et Loire, | | |
- p. 108 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1404 |Pig |Rouvre
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliotheque du Roi | 1405 |Ox |Gisors
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliotheque du Roi | 1408 |Pig |Pont-de-l'Arche
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- Louandre: Histoire | 1414 | " |Abbeville
- d'Abbeville | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1418 | " | "
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1419 | " |Labergement-le-Duc
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1420 | " |Brochon
- | | |
- " " " | 1435 | " |Trocheres
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 1451 |Rats and |Berne
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | Bloodsuckers|
- p. 423 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Societes | 1452 |Sixteen cows |Rouvre
- Savantes, iv, p. 476 | | and one goat|
- _sqq._ Dec. 1866 | | |
- | | |
- Gui-Pape: Decisiones | 1456 |Pig |Bourgogne
- Themis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, pp. | 1457 |Sow |Savigny-sur-Etang,
- 441-445. From Archives of | | | Bourgogne
- Monjeu and Dependencies | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches etc. | 1460-1|Weevils |Dijon
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Justice et | 1463 |Two pigs |Amiens
- Bourreau a Amiens | | |
- | | |
- Sauval: Histoire de Paris, | 1466 |Sow |Corbeil
- iii, p. 387. Memoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris| 1470 |Mare |Amiens
- | | |
- Promenades pittoresques dans| 1474 |Cock |Bale
- l'Eveche de Bale. Journal | | |
- du Department du Nord, | | |
- Nov. 1, 1813. Memoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428. Johann| | |
- Gross: Kleine Baseler | | |
- Chronik. | | |
- | | |
- Schilling: Chronica (Zurich | 1478 |Inger (sort |Berne
- MS.), Hottinger: Hist. | | of weevil) |
- Eccles. Pars iv, pp. | | |
- 317-321 | | |
- | | |
- Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du |1479[6]|Inger | "
- Pays de Vaud | | |
- | | |
- Hist. de Nismes. Memoires, | 1479 |Rats and |Nimes
- cit., viii, p. 428. | | Moles |
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1479 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia von | 1481 |Caterpillars |Macon
- Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Victor Hugo: Notre Dame de | 1482 |Goat |Paris
- Paris | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | 1487 |Snails |Macon
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 416 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 | " |Autun
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 |Weevils |Beaujeu
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1490 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812, | 1494 |Pig |Clermont-les-Moncornet
- p. 88. Memoires, cit., | | | near Laon
- viii, p. 428, 446 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la | 1497 |Sow |Charonne
- Penalite, sub verb. | | |
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Voyage Litteraire de deux | 1499 |Bull |Beauvais
- Benedictins (Durand et | | |
- Martenne), 1717, ii, | | |
- p. 166-7 | | |
- | | |
- Archives de l'Abbaye de | 1499 |Pig |Seves near Chartres
- Josaphat. Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 434-5 | | |
- | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | 15th |Sow |Dunois
- 434 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | " |Caterpillars |Coire
- | | |
- " " " | " |Worms |Constance
- | | |
- " " " | " |Beetles |Coire
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | 1500 |Flies |Mayence
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500 |Snails |Lyon
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500- |Vermin |Autun
- | 1530 | (Rats, etc.)|
- | | |
- Memoires et Documents, publ.| 1509 |Vermin |Lausanne
- par la Soc. de la Suisse | | |
- Romande, vii, No. 97, pp. | | |
- 675-677 | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or | 1510 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or. | 1512 | " |Arcenaux
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 447 | | |
- | | |
- Mathieu: Hist. des Eveques |1512-13|Rats and |Langres
- de Langres, p. 188 | | Insects |
- | | |
- Groslee: Ephemerides, 1811, | 1516 |Weevils |Troyes in Champagne
- ii, p. 153, 168. _Cf._ |(1506 | |
- Theophile Raynaud: Opusc, | according |
- 1665, p. 482. Memoires, | to some |
- cit., viii, p. 413, 418, | authorities) |
- 424 | | |
- | | |
- Habasque: Not. hist. sur le | 1516 |Locusts |Treguier
- Litoral des Cotes-du-Nord,| | |
- p. 89 | | |
- | | |
- Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, | 1519 |Field-mice |Glurns (Stelvio)
- pp. 946-48 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la |1522[7]|Rats |Autun
- Penalite. _Cf._ Chasseneus| | |
- | | |
- Vernet in Themis ou | 1525 |Dog |Parliament of
- Bibliotheque des | | | Toulouse
- Jurisconsulte, viii | | |
- | | |
- Papon and Boesius: | 1528 |Not specified|Parliament of
- Decisiones. _Cf._ Themis, | | | Bordeaux
- viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1528 | " | " "
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1536 |Weevils |Lutry (on Lake
- contre les Animaux, p. | | | Leman)
- 505. From Grenier: | | |
- Documents relatifs a | | |
- l'hist. du pays de Vaud. | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1540 |Bitch |Meaux
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or | 1540 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1541 |She-Ass |Loudun
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Bailly: Traite des | 1541 |Grasshoppers |Lombardy
- Monitoires, ii | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1541 |Vermin |Lausanne
- | |(worms, rats,|
- | |bloodsuckers)|
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1543 |Snails and |Grenoble
- Themis, i, p. 196 | | Locusts |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1545 |Weevils |St. Jean de
- contre les Animaux, pp. | and | | Maurienne
- 544, 545, 556. De Actis | 1546 | |
- Scindicorum com. St. | | |
- Jul., etc. | | |
- | | |
- Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, | 1546 |Cow |Parliament of
- iii, p. 28, Registres | | | Paris
- manuscrits de la | | |
- Tournelle. _Cf._ Memoires,| | |
- cit., viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1550 | " | " "
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1551 |Goat |Ile de Rhe
- | | |
- " " " | 1554 |Sheep (ewe) |Beauge
- | | |
- Aldrovande: De Insectis, | 1554 |Bloodsuckers |Lausanne
- 1602, lib. vii, 724. | | |
- Memoires, cit. viii, | | |
- p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyer, cited in Revue des| 1554 |Insects |Langres
- questions historiques, v, | | |
- p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567| | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1556 |She-Ass |Sens
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de | 1557 |Pig |Saint-Quintin
- Saint-Quintin, p. 143. | | |
- Sorel: Proces contre des | | |
- animaux, etc., p. 9 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1560 |She-Ass |Loigny near
- manuscrit | | | Chateaudun
- | | |
- " " " | 1561 |Cow |Augoudessus in
- | | | Picardy
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del | 1562 |Weevils |Argenteuil
- Vino. Regist. Epir. Par. | | |
- for May 8 | | |
- | | |
- Ranchin on Gui. Pape | 1565 |Mule |Montpellier
- Quaest., 74. Themis, i, | | |
- p. 196. Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Themis, | 1565 |Not specified|Parliament of
- viii | | | Toulouse
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | 1566 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- Animaux | | | Paris
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliotheque | 1567 |Sow |Senlis
- Nationale of Paris | | |
- | | |
- Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, | 1572 |Pig |Moyen-Montier,
- 1811, ii, p. 374 | | | near Nancy
- | | |
- Lersner: Chronica, 1706, | 1574 | " |Frankfort-on-the-Main
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones Themis, | 1575 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- viii | | | Paris
- | | |
- Haus-Chronik von | 1576 |Pig |Schweinfurt
- Schweinfurt, in | | |
- Zeitschrift fuer deutsche | | |
- Kulturgeschichte, i, 156 | | |
- | | |
- Cannaert: Bydragen tot de | 1578 |Pig(?) |Ghent
- Kennis van het oude | | |
- strafrecht in Vlandern, | | |
- 1835, p. vii | | |
- | | |
- Derheims: Hist. de | 1585 |Pig |Saint-Omer
- Saint-Omer, p. 327 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist. du Dauphine. | " |Locusts |Valence
- _Cf._ Themis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1587 |Weevils |St. Jean-de-Maurienne
- contre les animaux, etc., | | |
- pp. 546, 549 | | |
- | | |
- Fornery and Laincel | 1596 |Dolphins |Marseilles
- | | |
- Theophile Raynaud: De | 16th |Weevils and |Cotentin
- Monitoriis, p. 482. | cent. | Grasshoppers|
- Memoires, cit., viii, |(first | |
- p. 429 | half) | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | " |Snails |Lyons
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 415 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Weevils |Macon
- | | |
- " " " | " |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | " |Dog |Scotland
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Duboys: Hist. du Droit | 16th |Weevils |Angers
- Crim. de la France | cent. | |
- | second| |
- | half | |
- | | |
- Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor | " |Rats |Spain
- Navarrus: Consilia seu | | |
- Responsa, 1602, ii, p. | | |
- 812. Memoires, cit., viii,| | |
- p. 419. Theoph. Raynaud, | | |
- cit., p. 482 | | |
- | | |
- Francesco Vivio: Decisiones,| 16th |Divers |Aquila in Italy
- No. 68. Cited by | cent. | animals |
- D'Addosio: Bestie Delinq.,| second| |
- p. 125 | half | |
- | | |
- Archives of Obwalden | " |Gadflies |Aargau
- | | |
- Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. | " |Locusts |Naples
- _Cf._ D'Addosio, cit., | | |
- p. 115. | | |
- | | |
- Sardagna: L'uomo e le | " |Horse |Portugal
- Bestie. Cited by D'Addosio| | |
- | | |
- Mornacius to Du Cange, | 1600 | |Beauvais
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Cow |Thouars
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Abbeville
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, | " |Weevils |Vercelli
- 1890, p. 141 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Themis, | 1601 |Dog |Brie
- viii. Lerouge: Reg. | | |
- secret manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Provins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Recueil d'Arrets | 1601 |Not |Parliament of
- | | specified | Paris
- | | |
- Charma: Lecons de | 1604 |Ass |Parliament of
- Philosophie | | | Paris
- | | |
- Guerra: Diurnali | " | " |Naples
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Joinville
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1606 |Sheep |Riom
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |Chateaurenaud
- | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Mare |Coiffy near Langres
- | | |
- | | |
- Lejeune: Memoires, cit., | " |Bitch |Chartres
- viii, p. 418 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1607 |Mare |Boursant near
- manuscrit | | | d'Epernay
- | | |
- " " " | 1609 | " |Montmorency
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Niederrad
- | | |
- Voltaire: Siecle de Louis | " |Cow |Parliament of
- XIV, ch. i. Louandre: | | | Paris
- Rev. des deux Mondes, | | |
- 1854, i, p. 334 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1610 |Horse |Paris
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1611 |Goat |Laval
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |St. Fergeux
- | | | near Rethel
- | | |
- " " " | 1613 |Sow |Montoiron near
- | | | Chatelleraut
- | | |
- " " " | 1614 |She-Ass |Le Mans
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, etc.,| 1616 |Rats and |Langres
- p. 13 | | insects |
- | | |
- Anzeige fuer Kunde der | 1621 |Cow |Machern near
- deutschen Vorzeit, 1880, | | | Leipsic
- col. 102 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1621 |Mare |La Rochelle
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1622 | " |Montpensier
- | | |
- " " " | 1623 |She-Ass |Bessay near Moulins
- | | |
- " " " | 1624 |Mule |Chefboutonne (Poitou)
- | | |
- Doepler: Theat. pen., ii, | 1631 |Mares and |Greifenberg
- p. 574 | | Cows |
- | | |
- Marchisio Michele: Gatte | 1633 |Weevils |Strambino
- ed. insetti nocivi, 1834, | | | (Ivrea)
- p. 63 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Bellac
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1641 |Pig |Viroflay
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1647 |Mare |Parliament of
- manuscrit | | | Paris
- | | |
- " " " | 1650 | " |Fresnay near Chartres
- | | |
- Crollolanza: Storia del | 1659 |Caterpillars |Chiavenna
- Contado di Chiavenna, | | |
- p. 455 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gazzetta | 1661 |Weevils |Turin
- Litteraria di Torino, | | |
- Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Cotton Mather: Magnalia | 1662 |Cow, two |New Haven, Conn.
- Christi Americana, Book | | Heifers, |
- vi. London, 1702 | | three Sheep,|
- | | and two Sows|
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1666 |Mare |Tours
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |St. P. Lemontiers
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1667 |She-Ass |Vaudes near
- manuscrit | | | Bar-sur-Seine
- | | |
- " " " | 1668 |Mare |Angers
- | | |
- Annales scientifiques de | 1670 |Locusts |Clermont
- l'Auvergne, Vol. vii, | | |
- p. 391 | | |
- | | |
- Doepler: Theatrum pen., ii, | 1676 |Mare and Cow |Silesia
- p. 5 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1678 | " |Beauge
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di | " |Weevils |Turin
- Torius, Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones, i, | 1679 |Mare |Parliament
- p. 914. Memoires, cit., | | | d'Aix
- viii, p. 431. Boniface: | | |
- Traite des matieres | | |
- criminelles, 1785, p. 31 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist du Dauphine. | Before|Worms |Constance
- Themis, viii | 1680 | | and Coire
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1680 |Mare |Fourches near
- manuscrit | | | Provins
- | | |
- Heinrich Roch: Schlesische | 1681 |Mare |Wuenschelburg
- Chronik, p. 342. Doepler: | | | in Silesia
- Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 | | |
- _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1684 |Mare |Ottendorf
- | | |
- " " " | 1685 | " |Striga
- | | |
- Dulaure: Description des | 1690 |Locusts |Pont-de-Chateau
- principaux lieux de la | | | in Auvergne
- France, 1789, v, p. 493 | | |
- _sqq._ Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 412 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1692 |Mare |Moulins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi,| End of|Turtledoves |Canada
- p. 79. Memoires, cit., | 17th | |
- viii, p. 431 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Meiners: Vergleichung des | " |He-Goat |Russia
- aeltern u, neuern | | banished |
- Russlands, p. 291. | | to Siberia |
- _Cf._ Amira, p. 573 | | |
- | | |
- Registres de la Paroise de | 1710 |Rats |Grignon
- Grignon | | |
- | | |
- Sorel: Proces contre des | 1710 |Vermin |Autun
- animaux, etc., p. 23 | | |
- | | |
- Rinds Herreds Kroenike and | 1711 | " |Als in Jutland
- other sources given by | | |
- Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Agnel: Curiosites | 1713 |Termites |Piedade no Maranhao
- judiciaires et | | | in Brazil
- historiques du moyen-age, | | |
- p. 46. _Cf._ Manoel | | |
- Bernardes: Nova Floresta | | |
- ou Sylva de varios | | |
- apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom. | | |
- Lisboa, 1706-47 | | |
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliotheque | 1726 |Not specified|Paris
- Nationale of Paris, | | |
- No. 10,970. D'Addosio: | | |
- Best. Del., p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements contre | 1731 |Insects |Thonon
- les animaux, p. 508 | | |
- | | |
- La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 | 1733 |Vermin |Buranton
- _sqq._ Amira, p. 564 | | |
- | | |
- Rousseaud de Lacombe: | 1741 |Cow |Poitou
- Traite des matieres crim. | | |
- D'Addosio: Best. Del., | | |
- p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ant. de Saint-Gervais: | 1750 |She-Ass |Vanvres
- Hist. des Animaux | | |
- | | |
- A Report of the Case of | 1771 |Dog |Chichester, England
- Farmer Carter's Dog. | | |
- Amira, p. 559 | | |
- | | |
- Comparon: Hist. du | 1793 | " |Paris
- Tribunal Revolutionnaire | | |
- de Paris. _Cf._ Sorel, | | |
- op. cit., p. 16 | | |
- | | |
- Filangieri: Scienza della | 18th |Dogs |Italy
- Legislazione | cent. | |
- | | |
- Det. Kong. Danske | | |
- Landhusholdnings-Selskabs | 1805-6|Vermin |Lyoe in Denmark
- Skrifter. Ny Saml. ii, 1, | | |
- 22. Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, | 1826 |Locusts |Clermont-Ferrand
- etc., p. 15 | | |
- | | |
- Gazette des Tribunaux, | 1845 |Dog |Paris
- Jan. 23, 1845 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1864 |Pig |Pleternica in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Krauss, quoted by Amira, | 1866 |Locusts |Pozega in
- p. 573 | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- " " " | " |Grasshoppers |Vidovici in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Desnoyer: Recherches, | 19th |Locusts |Catalonia
- etc., p. 15 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Allg. deutsche | | |
- Strafrechts-zeitung, | " |Cock |Leeds in England
- 1861, No. 2. Also Pertile:| | |
- Gli animali in giudizio | | |
- | | |
- Cretella: Gli Animali | " |Wolf |Calabria
- sotto processo in Fanfulla| | |
- 1891, No. 65. _Cf._ Amira,| | |
- p. 569 | | |
- | | |
- New York Herald and Echo | 1906 |Dog |Delemont in
- de Paris, May 4, 1906[8] | | | Switzerland
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-G
-
-Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.
-
- Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passee devant Guiot de
- Montfort, tabellion a Falaise, et donnee par le bourreau de cette
- ville de la somme de _dix sols et dix deniers tournois_ pour sa peine
- et salaire d'avoir traine, puis pendu a la justice de Falaise une
- truie de l'age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mange le visage de
- l'enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui etait au bers et avoit trois mois et
- environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de _dix sols
- tournois pour un gant neuf_ quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
- cette quittance est donne a Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
- bourreau y declare qu'il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
- et qu'il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.
-
-Charange: _Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux_. Paris, 1764. Tome II. p.
-72. Also _Statistique de Falaise_, 1827. Tome I. p. 63.
-
-
-H
-
-Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
- scel des obligacions de la vicomte de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
- que par devant Bynet de l'Espiney, clerc tabellion jure ou siege dudit
- lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,[9] en la
- viconte d'Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
- homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
- Mortaing, c'est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
- paine et salaire d'estre venue d'Avrenches jusques a Mortaing, pour
- faire acomplir et pendre a la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
- lequel avait tue et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
- ladite viconte de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
- a estre trayne et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de _Co
- ... rin_, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
- dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paie, et en quita le roy nostre
- sire, ledit viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
- selle ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C'en fut fait
- l'an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII{e}
- jour de septembre. Signe J. LOURS. (Countersigned) BINET.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of the _Bibliotheque du Roi_. _Vide_
-Memoires, _ibid._ pp. 439-40.]
-
-
-I
-
-Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King's proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.
-
- A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant a
- Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
- chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
- Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
- justice d'une truye qui avait devore un petit enffant, a convenu faire
- necessairement les frais, commissions et depens ci-apres declares,
- c'est a savoir: Pour depense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, au maitre des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris a Meullant faire
- ladite execution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
- maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, pour la voiture qui la mena a la justice, six sols parisis.
-
- Item, pour cordes a la lier et haler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.
-
- Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.
-
- Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
- parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions etre vray par
- ces presentes scellees de notre scel, et a greigneur confirmation et
- approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la chatellenie dudit
- lieu de Meullant, le XV{e} de mars l'an 1403. Signe de Baudemont, avec
- paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la chatellenie de Meullant.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Herisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the _Memoires de la Societe Royale
-des Antiquaires de France_. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]
-
-
-J
-
-Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.
-
- Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion jure pour le roy nostre sire en la
- viconte du Pont de Larche, fut present Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
- prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
- avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
- homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
- somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c'est
- assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouve (livre) le pain
- du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
- (Here the names of these prisoners are given.) _Item_ a ung porc
- admene es dictes prisons, le 21{e} jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
- au 17{e} jour de juillet apres en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
- pendu par les gares a un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, a quoy
- il avoit este condempne pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
- et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13{e}
- jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
- tue ung pettit enfant, auquel temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
- pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
- trouve et baille la corde qu'il esconvint a lier icelui porc qu'il
- reschapast de ladite prison ou il avait este mis, x deniers tournois.
- Du 16 Octobre 1408.
-
-[Derived from manuscripts of the _Bibliotheque du Roi_. _Vide_ Memoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]
-
-
-K
-
-Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.
-
- Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
- terres au conte de Bourgoingue, salut.
-
- Oye la supplication de frere Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
- prieurte de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
- le V{e} jour de ce present mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
- Muet, dit _le Hochebet_, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
- pors des habitans d'icelle ville ou finaige d'icelle, et au cry de
- l'un d'iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
- sus audit Perrenot, l'ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
- comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu'il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
- suppliant, et par le pere dudit Perrenot a este trouve blessier a mort
- par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confesse en la
- presence de son dit pere e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost apres il
- soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
- justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
- arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
- maniere qu'il appartient, et encore les detient prissonniers tant
- ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
- que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
- truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessie. Et ledit prieur nous
- ait supplie que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
- trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivre. Nous
- inclinans a sa requeste, avons de grace especiale ouctroye et
- consenty, et par ces presentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
- justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l'ung des pourceaulx
- dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis a delivre,
- nonobstant qu'ils aient este a la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
- mandons que de notre presente grace vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
- user ledit prieur et autres qu'il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
- grace.
-
- Donne a Montbar, le XII{e} jour de septembre de l'an de grace mil CCC
- LXX IX. Ainsi signe. Par monseigneur le duc: _J. Potier_.
-
-[Published by M. Garnier in the _Revue des Societes Savantes_, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 _sqq._, from the archives of Cote-d'Or and reprinted by D'Addosio
-in _Bestie Delinquenti_, pp. 277-8.]
-
-
-L
-
-Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk's office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.
-
- Entre le procureur de messieurs[10] demandeur et accusateur au
- principal et requerant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
- du quart d'abondant, d'une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accuse,
- deffendeur et defaillant, d'autre part.
-
- Veu le proces criminel, charges et informations, decret de prise de
- corps, adjournement a troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
- dict quart d'habondant, le recollement des dicts temoings et
- _recognaissance faicte par les dicts temoings de la chienne dont est
- question_, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
- conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d'habondant
- ont este bien donnes pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accuse,
- attainct et convaincu .........
-
- Pour reparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
- estre pendu et estrangle a une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
- dressee aux lices du Marche aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
- lieu et endroict ou les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
- auparavant ladicte execution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
- assommee par l'executeur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
- les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brules et
- mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehende en sa
- personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
- execute par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attache a ladicte
- potence, et declarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisques
- a qui il appartiendra, sur cieux prealablement pris la somme de cent
- cinquante livres d'amende que nous avons adjugees auxdicts sieurs, sur
- laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononce et execute
- par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
- Signe _Guyot_.
-
-[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Herisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Societe Royale des Antiquaires de France. _Vide_ Memoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]
-
-
-M
-
-Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, pres des fousses du Chastelet de dit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, et ce le 10{e} jour du moys de janvier 1457, presens
- maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
- Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, Andre Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
- Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins a ce
- appelles et requis, l'an et jour dessus dit.
-
- Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
- dame dudit Savigny, demandeur a l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
- Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d'office dudit lieu de
- Savigny, demandeur a l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
- Savigny _deffendeur_, a l'encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
- honorable homme et saige M{r}. Benoit Milot d'Ostun, licencie en loys
- et bachelier en decret, conseillier de monseigneur le duc de
- Bourgoingne, a ete dit et propose que le mardi avant Noel dernier
- passe, _une truye_, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
- presentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu'ils ete prins en
- flagrant delit, ont commis et perpetre mesmement ladicte truye murtre
- et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
- de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
- Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
- causes d'office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit defendeur
- repondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit a
- souffisance, et lequel par nous a este somme et requis ce il vouloit
- avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
- ledit cas luy a este faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
- premiere, deuxieme et tierce fois, que s'il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
- justice ne s'en deust faire l'on estoit tout prest de les oir en tout
- ce qu'il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et execution de justice
- que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
- dit et respondu qui'l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
- ait este procede en la maniere qui s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que pour
- la partie dudit demandeur, avons este requis instamment de dire droit
- en ceste cause, en la presence dudit defendeur present et non
- contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons a tous que
- nous avons procede et donne nostre sentence deffinitive en la maniere
- que s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
- este propose pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert a
- souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuement hue. _Aussi
- conseil avec saiges et practiciens_, et aussi considere en ce cas
- l'usance et coustume du pais de Bourgoingne, aiant Dieu devant nos
- yeulx, nous disons et pronuncons par notre dite sentence, declairons
- la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquee a la justice de
- Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise a justice et au dernier supplice,
- et estre pendus par les pieds derriers a ung arbre esprone en la
- justice de Madame de Savigny, considere que la justice de madite dame
- n'est mie presentement elevee, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
- arbre esprone, et ansi le disons et prononcons par notre dicte
- sentence et a droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
- qui n'appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangies dudit Jehan
- Martin, combien que aient estes troves ensanglantes, l'on remet _la
- cause d'iceulx coichons_ aux tres jours, et avec ce l'on est content
- de les rendre et bailler audit _Jehan Bailly_, en baillant caucion de
- les rendre s'il est trove qu'il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
- paiant les poutures, et fait l'on savoir a tous, sous peine de
- l'amende et de 100 sols tournois qu'ils le dieut et declairent dedans
- les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, apres la
- prononciation d'icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
- promoteur des causes d'office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
- advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demande
- acte de nostre dicte court a lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroye, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
- notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
- la presence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommes, je lui ai ouctroye, ce
- fait l'an et jour dessus dit et presens les dessus tesmoings. _Ita
- est._ Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est ecrit:
-
- _Item_, en oultre, nous juge dessus nomme, savoir faisons que
- incontinent apres nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnee par nous les an
- et jour, et en la presence des temoings que dessus, avons somme et
- requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et
- se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recreance d'iceulx; lequel a
- dit et repondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
- en iceulx coichons; et qui s'en rapportoit a ce que en ferions;
- pourquoy sont demeurez a la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
- de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
- causes d'offices, nous en a demande acte de court, lequel lui nous
- avons ouctroye et ouctroyons par ces presentes, et avec ce ledict
- procureur de ladicte dame, a moy notaire subescript, m'en demanda
- instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroye en la presence desdits
- tesmoings cy-dessus nommes.
-
- _Item_, en apres, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
- faisons a tous que incontinent apres les chouses dessus dictes, avons
- faict delivrer realement et de fait ladicte truye a maistre Etienne
- Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant a Chalons-sur-Saone,
- pour icelle mettre a execucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
- dicte sentence, laquelle delivrance d'icelle truehie faicte par nous
- comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mene sur une
- chairette ladicte truye a ung chaigne esprone, estant en la justice de
- ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esprone, icelluy maistre
- Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant a
- execution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
- laquelle delivrance et execution d'icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
- Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demande acte de
- nostre dicte court a lui estre faicte et donnee, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyee, et avec ce a moi, notaire subscript, m'a demande instrument
- ledit procureur a luy estre donnee, je luy ai ouctroye en la presence
- des temoings cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
- Ainsi signe Mongachot, avec paraphe.
-
-Nearly a month later, on "the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin" (which occurred on Feb. 2.), "the six little
-porklets or sucklings" were brought to trial. The following is the _proces
-verbal_.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussee de l'Estang dudit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
- Savigny, et ce le vendredy apres la feste de la Purification Notre
- Dame Vierge, presens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
- Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.
-
- Veue les sommacions et requisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
- damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, a Jehan Bailly
- alias Valot de advohe on repudie les coichons de la truye nouvellement
- mise a execution par justice a raison du murtre commis et perpetre par
- la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
- este remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
- d'iceulx coichons rendre, s'il estoit trouve qu'ils feussions
- culpables du delict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
- les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
- instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
- declairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et a droit:
- iceulx coichons competer et appartenir comme biens vaccans a ladite
- dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l'usence et la
- coustume de pais le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte sentence, ledit
- procureur de ladite dame en a demande acte, de nostre dicte court a
- luy estre donnee et ouctroyee. Avec ce en a demande instrument a moy
- notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroye en la presence des dessus
- nommes. Signe Mongachot avec paraphe.
-
-[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boete 25{e}, liasse 1,
-2, & 3, etc.) _Vide_ Memoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]
-
-
-N
-
-Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Seves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.
-
- _Le lundi 18 avril 1499._
-
- Veu le proces criminel faict par-devant nous a la requeste du
- procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbe et convent de Iosaphat, a
- l'encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers esprisons de
- ceans, pour raison de la mort advenue a la personne d'une jeune
- enfant, nommee Gilon, agee de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
- enfant avoit ete baillee a nourrice par sa mere: ledict meurtre advenu
- et commis par un pourceau de l'aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
- Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
- et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
- jurisdiction faictes a la requete dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
- sur ce conseil aulx saiges, _ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
- condampnes et condampnons en l'amende envers de justice de dix-huit
- franz_, qu'il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et a tenir
- prison jusqu'a plein payement et satisfaction d'iceulx a tout le moins
- qu'ils avoient baille bonne et seure caution d'iceulx.
-
- _Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau_, pour les causes contenues
- et etablies audict proces, _nous les avons condampne et condampnons a
- etre pendu et execute par justice_, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
- seigneurs, par notre sentence definitive, _et a droit_.
-
- Donne sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
- que susdicts. _Signe_ C. Briseg avec paraphe.
-
-[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. _Vide_ Memoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]
-
-
-O
-
-Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces presentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
- Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l'eglise et monastere
- de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Premontre, et les echevins de
- ce meme lieu; comme il nous eust ete apporte et affirme par le
- procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbe et convent de
- Saint-Martin de Laon, qu'en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
- appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
- relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust estrangle et _defacie_ ung jeune
- enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
- cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
- requerant a cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions proceder, comme
- justice at raison le desiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
- savoir et cognoitre la verite dudit cas, eussion oui et examine par
- serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
- Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
- affirme par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
- dernier passe ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
- Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
- Dizy ..., ayant delaisse en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
- renchargea a une sienne fille, agee de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
- lequel temps ladite fille s'en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
- laisse ledit enfant couche en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
- ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et defigura et mangea
- le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tot apres ledit enfant, au moyen
- des morsures et devisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
- siecle trepassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
- dudit cas, et afin d'exemplaire et garde justice, avons dit, juge,
- sentencie, prenonce et appointe, que ledit pourceaulz _estant detenu
- prisonnier_ et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
- hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estrangle, en une fourche de bois, aupres et
- joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
- relligieux, estant aupres de leur cense d'Avin.... En temoing de ce
- nous avons scelle ces presentes de notre scel.
-
- Ce fut fait le quatorzieme jour de juing, l'an 1494, et scelle en cire
- rouge; et sur le dos est ecrit:
-
- Sentence pour ung pourceaulz execute par justice, admene en la cense
- de Clermont, et etrangle en une fourche les gibez d'Avin.
-
-[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in _L'Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812_, p. 88. _Vide_
-Memoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]
-
-
-P
-
-Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
- royal et procureur au bailliage et siege presidial de Senlis, bailly
- et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d'Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
- M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
- faisons:
-
- Veu le proces extraordinairement fait a la requete du Procureur de la
- seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue a une
- jeune fille agee de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyenor Darmeige
- et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
- trouvee avoir este mangee et devoree en la tete, main senestre et au
- dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
- appartenant a Louis Mahieu, frere de la dite femme et son proche
- voisin;
-
- Le proces verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
- parrain et de sa marraine qui l'ont recogneu;
-
- Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
- dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la visitation faicte de la dicte
- truye a l'instant du dit cas advenu et tout considere en conseil, il a
- ete conclu et advise par justice que POUR LA CRUAUTE ET FEROCITE
- COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE, elle sera exterminee par mort et pour ce
- faire sera pendue par l'executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
- estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
- chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses a
- tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
- de ne plus laisser echapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
- seure garde, sous peine d'amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
- s'ily echoit, sauf et sans prejudice a faire droit sur les conclusions
- prinses par le dit Procureur a l'encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
- ainsi que de raison, au temoin de quoy nous avon scelle les presentes
- du scel de la dicte justice.
-
- Ce fu faist le jeudi 27{e} jour de Mars 1557 et execute ledit jour par
- l'executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.
-
-[Dom. Grenier, _Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris_, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D'Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]
-
-
-Q
-
-Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupre, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.
-
- A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
- du Bailly du temporel de l'eglise & abbaye notre Dame de Beaupres de
- l'ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables & discretes personnes & mes
- tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbe & convent de
- ladite abbaye, salut. Comme a la requeste du procureur de mesdits
- seigneurs, & par leur justice temporelle qu'ils ont en leur terre &
- seigneurie du Caurroy eut ete nagaires prins & mis en la main d'icelle
- leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant a Jean Boullet
- censier & fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &
- cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau etant aux champs & sur le
- territoiiere d'icelle eglise, auroit par furiosite occis & mis a mort
- un joine fils, nomme Lucas Dupont, de l'age de quatorze a quinze ans,
- ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis a la garde de
- ces bestes a corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
- thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
- estre faite, & qu'il fut execute jusqu'a mort inclusivement par la
- justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
- & de la detestation d'iceluy. Sur quoy enqueste & information eussent
- ete faites de la forme & maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
- procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
- que veu laditte enqueste & information & sur tout en conseil & advis,
- nous par nostre sentence & jugement, avons dies & jugie, que pour
- raison de l'omicide, dont dessus est touchie, fait par ledit thorreau
- en la personne d'iceluy Lucas, & pour la detestation du crime d'iceluy
- homicide, ledit thorreau nomme confisque a mesdits seigneurs sera
- execute jusques a mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, & pendu a
- une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre & seigneurie dudit
- Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
- le avons condamne & condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
- scel a ces lettres qui furent faites & pronunchies audit lieu du
- Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
- l'aisne, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes & subjets de mesdits
- seigneurs, Jehan Charles, & Clement le Carpentier, & plusieurs autres
- les seizieme jour de May l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
- Ainsi signe, Ileugles, ad ce commis.
-
-[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupre. Vide _Voyage Litteraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur_. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]
-
-
-R
-
-Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.
-
-After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:
-
- "Venez, famille desolee;
- Venez, pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins;
- Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.
- Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misere;
- Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre pere,
- Notre pere par qui nous fumes engendres,
- Notre pere qui nous....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez, tirez, tirez.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Notre pere, messieurs....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!
- Ils ont pisse partout.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Ouf! je me sens deja pris de compassion.
- Ce que c'est qu' a propos toucher la passion!
- Je suis bien empeche. La verite me presse;
- Le crime est avere, lui-meme il le confesse.
- Mais, s'il est condamne, l'embarras est egal;
- Voila bien des enfants reduits a l'hopital."
- _Les Plaideurs_, Act III, sc. 3.
-
-
-S
-
-Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.
-
- Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
- Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,[11] da sie gleich
- hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
- worden. Vber welch vnerhoerten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
- Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
- Leipzig sich darueber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
- Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
- abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen oeden ort billig gefuehret,
- daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
- Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
- Schaefferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
- auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.
-
-[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-_Anzeiger fuer Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit_. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
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-1601, 2; 5 vols., Col., 1616. In his Consiliorum, lib. v. De Senten.
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----- Traite des Monitoires, avec un plaidoyer contre les Insects. Lyon,
-1668.
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- This work contains a full account of the method of procedure in the
- penal prosecution of animals.
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-BEAUMANOIR, PHILIPPE DE: Les Coutumes de Beauvoisis. Paris, 1690. New
-edition by Le Comte Beugnot. 1842.
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-BENEDIKT, M.: Anatomische Studien in Verbrecher Gehirnen. Wien, 1879.
-Translated into English. New York, 1881.
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-1880.
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-6. Lyon, 1620.
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----- Traite des Matieres Criminelles, p. 31. Paris, 1785.
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-Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Thier. Bamberg, 1894.
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-propter multiplicem et reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate
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-
- (Chassenee was afterwards first president of the Parlement de
- Provence, a position corresponding to chief justice.)
-
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----- La Jurisprudence du Jurisconsult Guy Pape dans ces Decisions. Avec
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-insectes et autres animaux nuisibles a l'agriculture. Paris, 1853.
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- Originally published in Bulletin du comite historique des monuments
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-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil
- spirits, 76
-
- Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, 180
-
- Addosio, Carlo d', his _Bestie Delinquenti_ cited, 1, 4;
- his list of animal prosecutions, 135;
- on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, 159
-
- AEschines, cited, 172
-
- AEschylus, his _Choephoroi_ cited, 174
-
- Ahuramazda, 57, 61, 82, 176
-
- Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, 153
-
- Altiat, his poem quoted, 93
-
- Amira, Prof. Karl von, his _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ cited, 1-3,
- 137
-
- Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all
- incantations and excommunications, 4, 36;
- citations from the Bible in proof of their power, 25;
- render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake
- Leman, 27;
- turn white bread black to punish heresy, 28;
- fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, 28, 29;
- sold by the Pope, 30;
- hurled against noxious vermin, 37;
- made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, 37;
- differ from excommunications, 51-54;
- superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by
- Paris green, 53
-
- Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, 2;
- office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, 3, 5;
- as satellites of Satan or agents of God, 5, 6, 52-57, 67;
- personification of, 10, 11;
- their competency as witnesses, 11;
- origin of their judicial prosecution, 12;
- as born criminals, 14;
- tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and,
- 14, 193;
- instances of their criminal prosecution, 16, 18, 21, 37-50, 93-124,
- 134-157, 160-163;
- methods of procedure against, 31;
- whether legally laity or clergy, 32;
- punitive and preventive prosecution of, 33;
- their consciousness of right and wrong, 35, 247;
- false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, 40;
- can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, 51;
- items of expense in prosecuting, 49, 138, 140-143;
- not mere machines, 66;
- in folk-lore, 84;
- worship of, 85;
- imperfect lists of prosecuted, 135-137;
- burned and buried alive, 138;
- put to the rack to extort confession, 139;
- confiscation of valuable, 164, 189;
- unclean flesh of executed, 169;
- imputed criminality of, 177;
- criminals as ferocious, 212;
- mental and moral qualities of men and, 234;
- six categories of their criminal offences, 235;
- the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of
- men and, 247-252
-
- Anatolus, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Angel, Emile, cited, 124
-
- Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, 168;
- its cruel doctrine of accessories, 178;
- on tainted swords, 187
-
- Angro-mainyush, 57, 59, 61, 82
-
- Anthony, St., patron of pigs, 158
-
- Anthropologists, criminal researches of 211, 215
-
- Aquinas. _See_ Thomas
-
- Arcadius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Ashes, modern and mediaeval use of vermifugal, 53
-
- Augustine, St., cited, 94, 106
-
- _Aura corrumpens_ in houses and stalls, 8
-
- Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, 75
-
- Avesta, on exorcisms, 36;
- on good and evil creations, 57;
- on mad dogs, 176
-
- Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, 109
-
- Azpilcueta, Martin. _See_ Dr. Navarre.
-
-
- Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, 84;
- his preference for black beasts, 165
-
- Bailly, Gaspard, his _Traite des Monitoires_ cited, 52, 92-108
-
- "Basilisk-egg," 10
-
- Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, 136
-
- Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, 183
-
- Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, 132
-
- Beasts, sweet and stenchy, 55
-
- Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, 9
-
- Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, 175
-
- Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, 212
-
- Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, 245
-
- Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, 28
-
- Bernardes, Manoel, his _Nova Floresta_, 124
-
- Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, 2, 17, 20;
- list of prosecuted animals, 135-137
-
- Bichat, his defective cranium, 217
-
- Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of
- unexpiated crime on persons and property, 6-8;
- his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, 73
-
- Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, 218
-
- Blackstone, on deodands, 186, 189, 192
-
- Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, 194
-
- "Blue Laws," an advance in penal legislation, 209
-
- Bodelschwingh, his _bacillus infernalis_, 91
-
- Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, 127
-
- Boer, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, 153
-
- Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, 155
-
- Bonnivard, Francois, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, 38
-
- Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, 208
-
- Bougeant, Pere, his _Amusement Philosophique_ cited, 66-69;
- 80-86, 88-90, 92
-
- Bracton, 167;
- on deodands, 186
-
- Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, 217-219
-
- Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, 187
-
- Buggery, instances of this "nameless crime," 147-153;
- she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, 150;
- in the Carolina punished with death by fire, 151;
- in the Mosaic law, 152;
- sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, 153
-
- Bull, executed for murder, 161
-
-
- Calvin, his conception of God, 59
-
- Canute, King, 178
-
- Carolina, the, its severe penalties, 182
-
- Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, 151
-
- Cattle, bewitched by bad air, 8
-
- Cervantes, 167
-
- Character, factors in the formation of, 219;
- responsibility for, 239, 243
-
- Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, 80, 225
-
- Chassenee, Bartholomew, his _Consilia_, 2, 21-23;
- distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, 18;
- equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, 20;
- his erudition, 24;
- his absurd deductions, 26;
- regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, 32
-
- Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, 174
-
- Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan
- and as agents of God, 3-6;
- capital punishment never inflicted by, 31;
- its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, 50
-
- Cicero, cited, 22, 101;
- his approval of atrocious penalties, 178
-
- Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, 10, 11, 162;
- nature and origin of its supposed eggs, 163-5
-
- Cockatrice, 12, 163
-
- Coleridge, his definition of madman, 228
-
- Corpses, prosecuted and executed, 110, 198, 199;
- cannot inherit, 110
-
- "Corruption of blood," in theology and law, 181
-
- Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, 212
-
- Cows, executed for homicide, 169
-
- Cranks, execution of, 249-251
-
- Cretella, 17
-
- Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, 219;
- sentenced to death, 251
-
- Criminality, examples of imputed, 177-185;
- ancient and mediaeval conceptions of, 200;
- punished for the safety of society, 211, 248;
- compared to vitriol, 212;
- supposed physical indices of, 213-217;
- casual and constitutional, 214-223;
- ativism the source of, 212, 215;
- the result of hypnotism, 223-225;
- due to many uncontrollable conditions, 230;
- motives underlying animal, 235;
- animals conscious of, 247;
- contagiousness of, 252, 256
-
- Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, 122
-
- Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, 30
-
- Cybele, invoked against vermin, 133
-
-
- Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his _Rerum Criminalium
- Praxis_, 16;
- citations from this work, 109, 146;
- regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy,
- 153
-
- Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra's teachings degraded by the, 59
-
- Demosthenes, cited, 172
-
- Deodands, nature of, 186-190, 192;
- abolished in England under Queen Victoria, 192
-
- Devils, their damage to landed property, 7;
- multiplied by the spread of Christianity, 13, 80;
- destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, 68-70;
- incarnate in every babe, 70;
- maladies produced by, 72;
- modern inventions the devices of, 229
-
- Didymos, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his
- assassination, 175
-
- Dogs, trial and execution of mad, 176;
- crucified in Rome for imputed crime, 177
-
- Doepler, Jacob, on sodomy, 152;
- on _Lex talionis_, 182;
- on vampires, 197
-
- Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, 57
-
- Draco (Drakon), his law punishing weapons, 172
-
- Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, 253-255
-
- Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, 38
-
- Dumas, his _Count of Monte Christo_ cited, 240
-
- Duret, Jean, his _Treatise on Pains and Penalties_, 108
-
-
- Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime
- from a psychiatrical point of view, 170
-
- Eldrad, St., expels serpents, 50
-
- Electricity, execution by, 210
-
- Elk, as demon, 90
-
- Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, 172
-
- Erinnys, appeasing the, 174
-
- Escheat, in Scotch law, 189
-
- Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, 105
-
- Eustace, St., 56
-
- Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, 232
-
- Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, 3;
- sold at Rome, 30;
- properly speaking, animals not subject to, 51, 100;
- comical survivals of, 128.
- _See_ Anathemas
-
- Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, 27;
- applied as plasters, 72;
- superseded by conjurations among Protestants, 125;
- by Mohammedans, 137
-
-
- Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, 38
-
- _Felo de se_, a sort of treason, 190.
- _See_ Suicide
-
- Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, 253
-
- Field-mice, conjuration of, 133
-
- Flesh of executed animals tainted, 169
-
- Flies as demons, 28, 86
-
- Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, 136
-
- Fly-flaps, papal, 29
-
- Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, 198
-
- Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, 218
-
- Fox, diabolical nature of the, 56
-
- Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, 207
-
- Fricker, Thuering, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger,
- 116
-
-
- Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, 124
-
- Galton, on heredity, 239
-
- Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, 217
-
- Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers,
- 177
-
- Genius, to madness close allied, 228
-
- Goerres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, 125
-
- Gratiolet, on the brain of the "Hottentot Venus," 218
-
- Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder,
- 9, 174
-
- Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, 132
-
- Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, 128
-
- Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bale, 162
-
- Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, 250
-
-
- Harpokration, Valerius, cited, 172
-
- Harrison, Miss, cited, 187
-
- Hart, symbolism of the, 56
-
- Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, 252
-
- Hemmerlein, Felix. _See_ Malleolus
-
- Hens, crowing, 10
-
- Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and
- scientists, 232
-
- Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, 243
-
- Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, 249
-
- Honorius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Horses, condemned to death for homicide, 162
-
- Hubert, St., 56
-
- Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, 103
-
- Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild
- animals, 174
-
- Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, 223-226;
- as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, 225
-
-
- Idols, decapitation of, 174
-
- Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, 113-115;
- not in Noah's Ark, 120
-
- Insanity, degrees of, 200-203;
- in Italian and German law, 204-206;
- difficulty of defining, 226-228;
- in English law, 246;
- moral, 250;
- as a shelter for crime, 256
-
- Insects, prosecution of, 37, 41-49;
- incarnations of demons, 86
-
- Italy, palliation of crime in, 203, 204
-
-
- Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, 240-246
-
- Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, 152, 165
-
- John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, 28
-
- Jonson, Ben, cited, 130
-
- Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, 74
-
- Joergensen, cited, 17
-
- Joshua, his penal cruelty, 180
-
- King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, 55
-
- Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, 219
-
- Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, 171
-
- Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, 171
-
-
- Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, 238
-
- Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, 235
-
- Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by,
- 141
-
- Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, 163
-
- Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, 223
-
- Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, 169
-
- Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, 73
-
- Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, 254
-
- Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal
- justice, 167;
- inflicts horrible mutilations, 182
-
- Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison,
- 175
-
- Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, 237
-
- Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, 3, 64;
- dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, 22, 93, 94;
- prosecution of, 95-108, 136
-
- Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical
- possession, 71
-
- Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, 14;
- opposed to trial by jury, 185;
- regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of
- criminality, 213;
- on ativism as the source of crime, 215;
- innate criminality not eradicated by education, 223;
- compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of
- animals, 251
-
- Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, 74
-
- Lycia, punished by imputation, 180
-
-
- Majolus, cited, 86
-
- Maledictions. _See_ Anathemas
-
- Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg
- professors, 27;
- records a prosecution of Spanish flies, 110;
- his formula for banning serpents, 121
-
- Mangin, Arthur, cited, 16, 139
-
- Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, 60
-
- Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta's skull to that of a savage, 217
-
- Mantegazza, Prof., his "tormentatore," 245
-
- Manu, Institutes of, 168
-
- Marro, on metaphors as facts, 216
-
- Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight
- beasts, 148
-
- Menebrea, M. L., 2, 17;
- his theory untenable, 40
-
- Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, 85
-
- Mithridates, experiments with poisons, 244
-
- Moles, prosecution of, 111-113
-
- Monks, as landed proprietors in France, 158
-
- Monomania, frequency of, 227
-
- Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, 38
-
- Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, 176
-
- Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, 229
-
- Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, 170;
- barbarity of, 167, 180
-
- Murder, miasma of, 9, 174;
- weapons tainted by, 187-190
-
- Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, 176, 182
-
- Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, 64;
- in modern life, 228
-
-
- Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, 212
-
- Narrenkoetterlein, dog sentenced to a, 175
-
- Nature, imperfection of, 61
-
- Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, 90
-
- Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, 63
-
- Nikon, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence,
- 172
-
- Noah, God's covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts,
- 168
-
- Novels, morbific influence of sensational, 253
-
- Numa Pompilius, quoted, 106;
- his law for protecting boundary stones, 183
-
-
- Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, 68
-
- Osenbrueggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, 10,
- 17
-
- Ovid, quoted, 101, 103
-
- Oxen, executed, 168;
- punished although innocent, 183
-
-
- Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, 179
-
- Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, 198
-
- Pape, Guy, cited, 108
-
- Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, 126
-
- Pardoning power, exercise of the, 248
-
- Parsis, their Dasturs, 59;
- co-workers of Ahuramazda, 61, 82;
- no doctrine of atonement, 63
-
- Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, 62
-
- Patriotism as a perverter of justice, 185
-
- Pausanias cited, 172
-
- Penology, man and beast in modern, 14, 193;
- mediaeval and modern, 15, 200, 206-210;
- in Italy and Germany, 203-206;
- brutality of mediaeval, 206-209;
- moral and penal responsibility, 210;
- still inchoate, 15, 219-223, 257;
- deterrent aims of, 211, 248, 249;
- law of the survival of the fittest in, 221-223;
- punitive and preventive, 237;
- its relation to psycho-pathology, 248
-
- Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, 66
-
- Perjury, retaliative punishment of, 182
-
- Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, 118
-
- Phlebotomy. _See_ Blood-letting
-
- Pico di Mirandola, quoted, 103
-
- Piety, market value of, 7
-
- Pigs. _See_ Swine
-
- Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, 29
-
- Plato, his theory of creation, 59;
- on homicidal animals, 173;
- on retributive and preventive punishment, 237
-
- Pliny, quoted, 103
-
- Pollux, Julius, quoted, 172
-
- Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, 148
-
- Predestination in theology and science, 232-234
-
- Prussia, barbarous punishments, 180;
- opposed to reform, 205
-
- Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, 172;
- but not corpses, 199
-
- Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, 256
-
- Puritans, their penal enactments, 209
-
- Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, 87
-
-
- Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, 56-58
-
-
- Racine, his caricature of beast trials in _Les Plaideurs_, 166, 361
-
- Ram, banished to Siberia, 175
-
- Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, 130
-
- Rats, prosecution of, 18-21, 136;
- friendly letters of advice to, 129;
- Irish custom of rhyming, 130
-
- Raven, an imp of Satan, 57
-
- Renaud d'Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, 20
-
- Responsibility, moral and penal, 210
-
- Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of
- superstition, 14
-
- Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, 73
-
- Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and
- gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, 251;
- regards animals as often more rational than men, 252
-
-
- Satan, his earthly sovereignty, 60, 70;
- the doctrine of his final redemption, 68
-
- Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, 113, 120
-
- Schlaeger, cited, 176
-
- Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, 187
-
- Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, 113-115
-
- Scholasticism, quiddities of, 33
-
- Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, 127;
- man's responsibility for character alone, 239, 243
-
- Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, 178
-
- Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, 112
-
- Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, 147
-
- Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, 51;
- freed from poison by St. Hugon, 103
-
- Shakespeare, alludes to "be-rhymed" rats, 130;
- and a wolf on the gallows, 157
-
- Silius Italicus, quoted, 103
-
- Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, 253
-
- Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, 238
-
- Socrates, on self-perfection, 234
-
- Sodomy. _See_ Buggery
-
- Soldan, cited, 17
-
- Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, 128
-
- Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, 65;
- prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, 198;
- strangled in prison, 199
-
- Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, 190;
- condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, 191, 192;
- due to manifold influences, 229
-
- Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, 14
-
- Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, 28
-
- Swine, execution of, 16, 140-145, 149, 153-157, 161, 169;
- as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, 56, 165;
- Gadarene, 69, 91, 165
-
- Swords, tainted, 187
-
-
- Taine, his definition of man, 214
-
- Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, 236
-
- Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, 180
-
- Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, 213
-
- Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their
- defender as more industrious than the friars, 123
-
- Tertullian, quoted, 106
-
- Theognis, his bust punished for murder, 172
-
- Thomas a Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., 198
-
- Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, 53-55,
- 88, 101, 103
-
- Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, 90
-
- Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, 37, 94, 107
-
- Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, 1, 170
-
- Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law,
- 179-181
-
- Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the
- fig-tree, 25
-
- Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, 75
-
- Tribunals, proper office of criminal, 211, 232, 248
-
- Tritheim, on Satan's invisible apparition, 166
-
- Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, 179
-
- Tuerler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical
- court of Berne, 170
-
-
- Vampires, superstitions concerning, 195-198
-
- Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, 178
-
- Venidad, quoted, 63
-
- Ventilation, "bewitched kine" the result of bad, 8
-
- Vermin. _See_ Insects
-
- Virgil, quoted, 26
-
-
- Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, 38-49
-
- Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, 75
-
- Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, 195;
- decree for their extermination, 198
-
- _Werther_, Goethe's, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, 253
-
- Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, 125
-
- Witches in Judaic and mediaeval law, on a par with animals, 145;
- rendered harmless by burning, 196
-
- Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, 9
-
-
- Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, 57-59
-
- Zooepsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology,
- 237
-
- Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, 201
-
-
-_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] The name is also spelled Chassanee and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.
-
-[2] "Item: a ete delibere que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l'on contribuera aux frais au pro rata."
-
-[3] These animals are spoken of as _unvernuenftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmaeuse_. _Lut_ might be derived from the Old German _lut_ (_Laut_,
-Schrei), in which case _Lutmaus_ would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from _lutum_ (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediaeval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.
-
-[4] The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of "monitoires" and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.
-
-[5] A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.
-
-[6] This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.
-
-[7] Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.
-
-[8] In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.
-
-[9] In modern French _pendard_ means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.
-
-[10] Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.
-
-[11] _Mietkuhe_, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
-
-The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with
-transliterations in this text version.
-
-The original text includes a Maltese Cross symbol that is represented as
-[+] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
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-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
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-Language: English
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-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9_s._
-
-EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9_s._
-
-LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Execution of a Sow.]
-
-
-
-
- THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND
- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
- BY E. P. EVANS
- AUTHOR OF
- “ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,â€
- “EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY,†ETC., ETC.
-
-
- [Illustration]
-
-
- LONDON
- WILLIAM HEINEMANN
- MCMVI
-
-
-
-
-_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Sources--Amira’s distinction between retributive and
- preventive processes--Addosio’s incorrect designation of the
- latter as civil suits--Inconsistent attitude of the Church
- in excommunicating animals--Causal relation of crime to
- demoniacal possession--Squatter sovereignty of devils--
- _Aura corrumpens_--Diabolical infestation and lack of
- ventilation--“Bewitched kineâ€--Greek furies and Christian
- demons--Homicidal bees, laying cocks and crowing hens--
- Theory of the personification of animals--Beasts in
- Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws--Animal prosecutions
- and witchcraft--The Mosaic code in Christian courts--Pagan
- deities as demons--Born malefactors among beasts--The theory
- of punishment in modern criminology _p._ 1
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
- Criminal prosecution of rats--Chassenée appointed to defend
- them--Report of the trial--Chassenée employed as counsel in
- other cases of this kind--His dissertation on the subject--
- Nature of his argument--Authorities and precedents--The
- withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and explained
- by Dr. Trench--Eels and blood-suckers in Lake Leman cursed
- by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of Heidelberg
- theologians--White bread turned black, and swallows, fish,
- and flies destroyed by anathema--St. Pirminius expels
- reptiles--Vermifugal efficacy of St. Magnus’ crosier--Papal
- execratories--Animals regarded by the law as lay persons,
- and not entitled to benefit of clergy--Methods of
- procedure--Jurisdiction of the courts--Records of judicial
- proceedings against insects--Important trial of weevils at
- St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over more than eight
- months--Untenableness of Ménebréa’s theory--Summary of the
- pleadings--Futile attempts at compromise--Final decision
- doubtful--St. Eldrad and the snakes--Views of Thomas
- Aquinas--Distinction between excommunication and anathema--
- “Sweet beasts and stenchy beastsâ€--Animals as incarnations
- of devils--Their diabolical character assumed in papal
- formula for blessing water to kill vermin--Amusing treatise
- by Père Bougeant on this subject--All animals animated by
- devils, and all pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with
- them--Demons the real causes of diseases--Father Lohbauer’s
- prescription in such cases--Formula of exorcism issued by
- Leo XIII.--Recent instances of demoniacal possession--
- Hoppe’s psychological explanation of them--Charcot on
- faith-cures--Why not the duty of the Catholic Church to
- inculcate kindness to animals--Zoölatry a form of
- demonolatry--Gnats especially dangerous devils--
- Bodelschwingh’s discovery of the _bacillus infernalis_--
- Gaspard Bailly’s disquisition with specimens of plaints,
- pleas, etc.--Ayrault protests against such proceedings--
- Hemmerlein’s treatise on exorcisms--Criminal prosecution of
- field-mice--Vermin excommunicated by the Bishop of
- Lausanne--Protocol of judicial proceedings against
- caterpillars--Conjurers of cabbage-worms--Swallows
- proscribed by a Protestant parson--Custom of writing letters
- of advice to rats--Writs of ejectment served on them--
- Rhyming rats in Ireland--Ancient usage mentioned by
- Kassianos Bassos--Capital punishment of larger quadrupeds--
- Berriat-Saint-Prix’s Reports and Researches--List of
- culprits--Beasts burned and buried alive and put to the
- rack--Swine executed for infanticide--Bailly’s bill of
- expenses--An ox decapitated for its demerits--Punishment of
- buggery--Cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess declared
- to be sodomy--Trial of a sow and six sucklings for murder--
- Bull sent to the gallows for killing a lad--A horse
- condemned to death for homicide--A cock burned at the stake
- for the unnatural crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie’s
- investigation of the subject--Racine’s satire on such
- prosecutions in _Les Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat
- the law of the primitive man and the savage--The application
- of this iron rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit
- pig not to be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate
- objects--Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell
- sentenced to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting
- insurrection--Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment
- prescribed for mad dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of
- talion and decrees of corruption of blood--Examples in
- ancient and modern legislation--Cicero approves of such
- penalties for political offences--Survival of this
- conception of justice in theology--Constitutio Criminalis
- Carolina--Lombroso opposed to trial by jury as a relic of
- barbarism--Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in
- English law--Applications of it in Maryland and in
- Scotland--Blackstone’s theory of it untenable--Penalties
- inflicted for suicide--Ancient legislation on this
- subject--Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in
- England _p._ 18
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
- Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
- Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the
- intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
- untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
- ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
- vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
- little children “even on Fridayâ€--Pope Stephen VI. brings
- the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern
- conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
- jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
- pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
- these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval
- penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
- sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--“Blue Laws†a great
- advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and penal
- responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
- abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity of
- criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense--
- Theories of the origin and nature of crime--Intelligence not
- always to be measured by the size of the encephalon--
- Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo
- Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the
- penal codes of to-day--Measures proposed by Lombroso and his
- school--Their conclusions not sustained by facts--Crime
- through hypnotic suggestion--Difficulty of defining
- insanity--Coleridge’s definition too inclusive--
- Predestination and evolution--Criminality among the lower
- animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
- Schopenhauer’s doctrine of responsibility for character--
- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie
- Jeanneret--“Method in Madness†not uncommon--Social safety
- the supreme law--Application of this principle to
- “Cranksâ€--Spirit of imitation peculiarly strong in such
- classes--Contagiousness of crime--Criminology now in a
- period of transition _p._ 193
-
-
- APPENDIX
-
- A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
- agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
- coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
- Amblevins _p._ 259
-
- B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
- Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
-
- C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
- against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
-
- D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
- the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
- of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
-
- E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
- commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
-
- F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
- of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
-
- G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
- Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
- of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a new
- glove _p._ 335
-
- H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
- acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois
- from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for having
- hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child in the
- parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
-
- I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
- Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
- bailiff and the king’s proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
- certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
- had devoured a small child _p._ 338
-
- J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
- Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont de
- Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and six
- deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and to one
- pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
-
- K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
- Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of the
- Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
- Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
- which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
- the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
- sows _p._ 342
-
- L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
- the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
- be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
-
- M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
- 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
- sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
- the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
-
- N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
- prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
- Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near Chartres, against a
- pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
- this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
- for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
-
- O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor of
- the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a
- pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide committed on
- the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
-
- P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
- and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
- Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout to
- be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a girl
- of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the said
- seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of
- an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
-
- Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
- by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupré, for furiously
- killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
- years of age _p._ 358
-
- R. Scene from Racine’s comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
- dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
- capon _p._ 360
-
- S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
- University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
- killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
-
- INDEX _p._ 373
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled “Bugs and Beasts before the Law,†and “Modern and Mediæval
-Punishment,†which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira’s _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d’Addosio’s _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler’s _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Ménebréa, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenée, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.
-
-Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-“metaphysical aid†and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
-
-D’Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
-maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
-
-The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.
-
-It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-“godliness is profitable†not only “unto all things,†but also, as
-mediæval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his “son Timothy†never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-_benedictiones locorum_.
-
-We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-“bewitched kine.†European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
-
-The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediæval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-“transgressed in the thing accursed.†It was the same horror of aiding
-and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-“basilisk-egg,†or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.
-
-A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrüggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediæval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king’s ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrüggen’s
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bâle was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.
-
-The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind’s eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.
-
-Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
-deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des göttlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
-
-It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
-
-In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin’s _L’Homme et la Bête_ (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
-
-The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder’s _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
-(Antverpiæ, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled “De Damno Pecuario†is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
-
-The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
-
-The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are “Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere,†in _Miscellen aus
-der neuesten ausländischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Jörgensen’s _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella’s “Gli Animali sotto Processo,†in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Ménabréa, and Soldan’s “La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia,†in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrüggen’s theory.
-
-In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
-
-It is said that Bartholomew Chassenée,[1] a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l’Evêque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop’s
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenée to defend them.
-
-In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenée
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.
-
-At a later period of his life Chassenée was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrières and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d’Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenée thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.
-(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]
-
-In the report of the trial published in the _Thémis Jurisconsulte_ for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenée conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.
-
-Chassenée is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.
-
-This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenée now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.
-“The principal question,†he says, “is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent.†He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: “First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through
-procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication.†Chassenée’s method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.
-
-The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediæval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.
-
-His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by “whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero.†The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called “wisdom of ages,†renders him peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.
-
-In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenée refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David’s malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God’s curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, “Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire,†he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: “If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less†(_cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).
-
-An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: “It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false.†According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that “drew on it the curse.†The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: “Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart.†As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediæval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, “for the time of figs was not yet.â€
-
-A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenée is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil’s first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that “no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds,†all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since “no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema.†Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer’s dissertation.
-
-Coming down to more recent times, Chassenée mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib’s host, “all dead corpses.†William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis
-ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and “no other remedy was at hand.â€
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-“deacons with fly-flaps,†who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed “to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth.â€
-
-The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints’
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus’ Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter’s Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.
-
-In his “First Counsel†Chassenée not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)
-_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. § 5.] For this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word “conjurerâ€
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.
-
-Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenée thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediæval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.
-
-Chassenée also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that “things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them.†Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where “Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass.â€
-
-Chassenée endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zoö-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenée insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that “sin is not imputed when there is no law.†He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be “well-thought, well-said and well-done,†not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata
-hûkhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.
-
-Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; “and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema.†In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallicè urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenée, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man’s sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.
-
-The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charançon)
-known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different
-names, amblevin, bèche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.
-
-Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-François Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: “Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our sins.†Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A _procès-verbal_,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.
-
-About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Léon Ménebréa, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: _De l’origine de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-âge contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie_.
-
-It may be proper to add that Ménebréa’s theory of “the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given,†is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that “these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity.â€
-
-This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediæval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.
-
-But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before “his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official†by the
-syndics and procurators, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: “Formerly by virtue of divine services and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication.â€
-
-In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario
-moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).
-
-The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants’ advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, François Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants’ plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d’être_
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs’ replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, “a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God.†It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.
-
-On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.
-
-Meanwhile, in view of the law’s long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d’Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs’ advocate, François Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-“without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals,†and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it “in good form and of perpetual validity,†provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed “L. Prunier,
-curial,†and stamped with the seal of the commune.
-
-But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an “Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien,†containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the _procès-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till “the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation,†which fell on the 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.
-
-At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis_). The “egregious Petremand Bertrand,†in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.
-
-The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.
-
-In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: “_pro visitatione III flor._,†by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then “_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._,†which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-“_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._,†three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop’s official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_
-Appendix A.)
-
-In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man’s labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.
-
-It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Père Rochex:
-Gloire de l’Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of
-Briançon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God’s creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediæval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.
-
-Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-“waived†or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traité des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.
-
-One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (_s’en prendre à Dieu_). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediæval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.
-
-Thomas Aquinas, the “angelic doctor,†in his _Summa Theologiæ_ raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man’s
-subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother’s womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of “the beauty of Israelâ€; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.
-
-It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan “instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore proper to be cursed,†as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75),
-and adds “the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment.†This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
-
-But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was “printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,â€
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-“several fine moralities,†and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes
-doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
-
- “Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.â€
-
-According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
-
-Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: “Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious.†“We are all,†adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, “more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended.†Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
-
-This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,
-_hûkhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhûkhta_,
-_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these “mighty opposites,†the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that “dreadful idealization of wickedness†which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.
-
-Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast
-
- “Red in tooth and claw
- With ravin,â€
-
-that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the
-
- “One far-off divine event,
- To which the whole creation moves,â€
-
-consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.
-
-Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature’s handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to
-
- “Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die.â€
-
-The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates Angrômainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (_speñtô mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer’s)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.
-
-But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediæval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’
-claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, “dire
-chimeras†and other “delicate monsters,†there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Dædalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actæon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Mæra
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.
-
-Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: “I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought.†In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to “preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits.â€
-
-This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Père Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: “_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_,†and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes’ _Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.
-
-If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.
-
-But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God’s mercy or wrath is lost. “Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion.†The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.
-
-Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels.†Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been “prepared†for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two “exceeding
-fierce†demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, “Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?†This question has no
-significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Père Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.
-
-Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime. Some of them are engaged in “going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it,†in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-“science falsely so called.†Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to “forsake the devil and all his works.â€
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.
-
-The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.
-
-The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any
-mediæval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale
-Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_.
-
-That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of “a maiden of angelic beauty†in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stöcker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: “O, that Jew! Didn’t
-he have to drink gall?†When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him “go to hell,†which he forthwith did, “moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-‘Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!’ The voice was so sad,â€
-adds the bishop, “that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil.â€
-
-Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, “Every knee in
-heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus,†the fallen “Son
-of the Morning†retorted, “Not Luci, not Luci--never!â€
-
-It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstätt. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-“Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops.†In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession “is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church.†Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.
-
-Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the “metaphysical aid†of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.
-
-Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that “what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it.†But while affirming that “evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind,†and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed, the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.
-
-The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on _Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklärung des Besessenseins_
-(_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. “The priest,†he
-says, “exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils.†Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of “priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical means of healing,†and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-_Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891_ (Saarbrücken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the “holy coat†in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called “documentary proofs,†consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-“were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner.†He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person’s own mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.â€
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole.†Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people’s lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum’s assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on “Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition†in Appleton’s _Popular Science Monthly_ for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).
-
-The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it “hath no skill in surgery.â€
-
-But to return from this digression, Père Bougeant’s theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, “enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is the first act of God’s vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell.â€
-
-Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angrô-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.
-
-There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. “What matters it,â€
-replies the Jesuit Father, “whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned.†The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about “des
-Pudels Kern.â€
-
-This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim _universitas non delinquit_ has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, _quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus_, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That “the devil is an ass†is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-_débris_ of exploded mythologies adrift on the stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as
-
- “Der Herr der Ratten und der Mäuse,
- Der Fliegen, Frösche, Wanzen, Läuse.â€
-
- “The Lord of rats and of the mice,
- Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice.â€
-
-The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zoölatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. “It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of an elephant.†The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person’s stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the _Dies Caniculuares_ of
-Majolus (Meyer: _Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters_, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.
-
-As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. “Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing.†The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, “which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason.†Furthermore, it explains why “all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase.†Of the millions of
-germs, of which “great creating nature†is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing “any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils,†which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. “This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects.†The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.
-
-Father Bougeant calls his lucubration “a new system of philosophyâ€; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII. distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant’s ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he “protests too much, methinks.†In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.
-
-Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(_fürchterliche Zauberteufel_). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.
-
-A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-“fish or cacodemons†(_pisces seu cacodemones_), and maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenée on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.
-
-In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls “demonic infection†due to the presence of the _bacillus
-infernalis_ in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of _bacilli infernales_ which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Père Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.
-
-The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled _Traité des Monitoires_, already mentioned, treats “Of the
-Excellence of Monitories†and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-“one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them.â€
-
-M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as _post hoc,
-ergo propter hoc_. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which “came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (_i.e._ brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood.†Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects “were as long as a man’s
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure.†Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew’s
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of “inch of candle,†and anathematized them “in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.†Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, “having six wings with two teeth harder than flintâ€
-and “darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm,†laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of _De
-Civitate Dei_ as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.
-
-In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.
-
-The most important portion of M. Bailly’s work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (_requeste des
-habitans_), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (_plaidoyer des habitans_), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (_plaidoyer pour les insectes_), the
-replication of the inhabitants (_réplique des habitans_), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (_réplique du defendeur_), the conclusions of the bishop’s
-proctor (_conclusions du procureur episcopal_), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (_sentence du juge d’église_), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.
-
-The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:
-
-“Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Cæsar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the _Iliad_, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; _nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus_: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers, of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: ‘Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’†The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a “horse-load
-of citations†from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: “The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray.â€
-
-It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a rhetorical hotchpotch of “matter and
-impertinency mixed†as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.
-
-Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:
-
-“Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(_bestioles_), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.
-
-“Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph _Si quadrupes_, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: _Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret_.
-
-“The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute _De poen. tem. litig._ As regards these animals there is no _causa
-justa litigandi_; they are not bound in any manner, _non tenentur ex
-contractu_, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, _neque ex quasi contractu_, _neque ex
-stipulatione_, _neque ex pacto_, and still less _ex delicto seu quasi_,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.
-
-“Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(_qui ne porte coup_); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing _mal à propos_ or in vain: _Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Now I leave it to you to decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: _cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent_.â€
-
-The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: _quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet_. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as _extra ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction, as the apostle Paul says: “Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without.†_Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est._
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (_quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis_).
-
-A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them “every green herb for meat,†a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero’s treatise _De
-Officiis_, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (_s’en prendre à Dieu_), who has said: “I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number.â€
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.
-
-The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. “It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(_d’ores en avant_) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted.â€
-
-“To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness.†The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of “vile and paltry
-vermin.†In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs’ advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. “But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death.â€
-
-That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): “Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment,†_i.e._ unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-“like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.†The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to “send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you.†It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.
-
-The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.
-
-After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:
-
-“The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (_à la volée_), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it.†[This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-“Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.â€] The bishop’s proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. “It is truly a deep sea,†he says, “in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (_lettres closes_).†He
-suggests it may be “because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors,†and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (_liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium_). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.
-
-After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop’s proctor is simply an
-_oratio pro domo_, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.
-
-The official begins by stating the case as that of “The People _versus_
-Locusts,†declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-“by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,â€
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help and solace. “Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:
-
-“In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere.†If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech “Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils,†to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially “the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and particularly offensive character.†(_Vide_ Appendix B.)
-
-It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical _non sequiturs_ and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediæval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his _Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble_ (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: “_si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic._†Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(_Traicté des Peines et des Amendes_, p. 250; cf. _Thémis Jurisconsulte_,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that “if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed.†The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, _lieutenant-criminel au siége
-présidial d’Angers_, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: _Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, à la Mémoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimées et aux Contumax_, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (_legales homines_) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that “a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality†could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man’s memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.
-
-Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but “in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority,†the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who “defended them with great dignityâ€; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.
-
-In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,[3] which damaged the crops
-“by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow.†But “in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress,†a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, “to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings.â€
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvæ and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that “a free safe-conduct and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy.†(_Vide_
-Appendix C.)
-
-An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his “dearly
-beloved†are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-“with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm†and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by “a common
-prayer from house to house†to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: “Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah’s ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case, however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o’clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice.†The priest
-then exhorts his “dear children†devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (_Vide_ Appendix D.)
-
-There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger’s trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be “utterly intolerable.†This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.
-
-The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thüring Fricker
-to prosecute the case: “We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thüring Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (_brucorum_), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479.â€
-
-The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less “of the
-law’s delay†than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: “Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:
-
-“We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. _Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi._â€
-The phrase _das si beswärt werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers_ does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be _brutum fulmen_; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, “owing to our sins.†Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.
-
-The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah’s ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.
-
-Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: “By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God.†Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: “O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.â€
-
-In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza’s _Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna_ it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right “does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject.†Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.
-
-More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhão, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God’s creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an _argumentum ad
-monachum_ by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes’
-_Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes_, etc. Vol. V., Lisboá, 1747.]
-
-About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-“vergifteten Würmer,†and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.
-
-In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Görres’
-_Historisch-Politische Blätter_ for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: “If you don’t leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof.†This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.
-
-The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to “the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature.†This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By “fervent
-desire†merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man’s body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-“for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute.†Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as “doing in the spirit of the will,†an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of
-“the objectivation of the will.†Indeed, Schopenhauer’s postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.
-
-It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man’s spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by “Augustus Duke and Elector,†wherein he commends the
-“Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel Greysser,†for
-having “put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God’s word and of Christian devotion.†But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (_durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege_); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See Appendix E.)
-
-A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on “Conjuring Rats,†printed
-in _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_ (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, “Maine, Oct. 31, 1888,†and addressed in
-business style to “Messrs. Rats and Co.†The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they “can live snug
-and happy†in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use “Rough on Rats.†This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.
-
-In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:
-
- “Ratton and mouse,
- Lea’ the puir woman’s house,
- Gang awa’ owre by to ’e mill,
- And there ane and a’ ye’ll get your fill.â€
-
-In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:
-
- “A running stream they dare na cross.â€
-
-In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.
-
-It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or “rhyming†rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in _As you Like It_ Rosalind says in reference to Orlando’s verses:
-“I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember.†Randolph declares:
-
- “My poets
- Shall with a satire, steep’d in gall and vinegar,
- Rhime ’em to death, as they do rats in Ireland.â€
-
-Ben Jonson is still more specific:
-
- “Rhime ’em to death, as they do Irish rats,
- In drumming tunes.â€
-
-From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.
-
-In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(_la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:
-
- “Sortez, sortez d’ici, mulots!
- Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
- Quittez, quittez ces blés!
- Allez, vous trouverez
- Dans la cave du curé
- Plus à boire qu’à manger.â€
-
-The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:
-
- “Taupes et mulots,
- Sors de mon clos,
- Ou je te casse les os;
- Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
- Je te brûle la barbe jusqu’aux os.â€
-
-The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of “Callithumpian†music.
-
-Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Évêques du Mans_, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.)
-
-The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled τὰ γεωπονικά
-and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by the
-Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is given
-for getting rid of field-mice:
-
-“Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces.†The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the “Geoponicsâ€
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee’s letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.
-
-In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: “In yonder
-village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)â€; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebräuche aus Thüringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ’s death and the world’s
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
-
- “Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
- Protect this house and burn the rest.â€
-
-Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D’Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_
-Appendix F for a still fuller list.)
-
-The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (_Amira_, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.
-
-Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of “Phélippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens,†for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-“having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (_étoit allé de vie a trépas_).†In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-“buried all alive†(_enfoui tout vif_), “for having devoured a little
-child in l’hostel de la Couronne.†Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, “on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,â€
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Würtemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-“powerful medicine†to stay the epizoötic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.
-
-Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (_L’Homme et la Bête._ Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that “the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt,†is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. “The question,†which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.
-
-In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man’s
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a “master of high works†(_maître des hautes œuvres_), as he
-was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
-
-We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinité_) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l’Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, _la châsse de la bannière_ (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
-
-In 1394, a pig was found guilty of “having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff.†The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of “fifty souls
-tournois.†(_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:
-
- “Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.
-
- “Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
- perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
- bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
- sols parisis.
-
- “Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.
-
- “Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.
-
- “Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis.â€
-
-This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-“in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403.†(See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.
-
-Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus “Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche,†acknowledges the
-receipt, “through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (_vicomte_) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king’s bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison.†The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with “Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July,†when it was hanged “for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child†(_pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant_). For the pig’s board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account “ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape.†The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by “Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche.†(_Vide_ Appendix J.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged “until death ensueth,†for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d’Or,
-was left hanging “for a long space†on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: _Histoire de Saint-Omer_, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Châlons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: _dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum_. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: _De poena bruti
-delinquentis_. Lugduni, MDCX.)
-
-On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become _participes criminis_,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (_Vide_
-Appendix K.)
-
-A peculiar custom is referred to in the _procès verbal_ of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be “hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet.†The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. “From time immemorial,†we are told, “the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked.†The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.
-
- “’Twill be recorded for a precedent;
- And many an error, by the same example
- Will rush into the state: it cannot be.â€
-
-In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, “assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice.†Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter’s child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there “hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city.†For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.
-
-Buggery (_offensa cujus nominatio crimen est_, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (_punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur_), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad, a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be “hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted.†A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (_assommée_) by the executioner of high justice and
-“the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes.†It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (_Vide_ Appendix L.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his _Ordre
-Judiciaire_, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(_multoties_) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-_Magnalia Christi Americana_ (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that “on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities.†He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, “devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people.†Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, “lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret.†He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wünschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined that in
-burning the bodies the man’s should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-“who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare,†was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.
-
-For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive “together with the minutes of
-the trial;†his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master’s crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore “they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature.†This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by “Pintuel Prieur Curé†and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.
-
-The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire “according to common customâ€
-(“_so ein_ Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten.†Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his _Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium_ (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that “if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(_Caviller oder Feldmeister_).†The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. “If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated, then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby†[Jacobi Döpleri,
-_Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen_, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]
-
-All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediæval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: “Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live.†In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, _gravius_ and _gravissimum_; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Döpler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the _peccatum gravissimum_; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.
-
-It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, “since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog†(Döpl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, “inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts.â€
-
-But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of “murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny,†and sentenced to be “hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esproné_).†Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but “in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother’s crime.†Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit “on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin,†the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the _procès verbal_ has been preserved. (See
-Appendix M.)
-
-Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, “on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts.†The pig was condemned to be “hanged and
-executed by justice.†The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
-
-According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.
-
-On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having “strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife,†and
-proceeded against “as justice and reason would desire and require.â€
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified “on their oath and
-conscience†that “on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (_de ce siècle trépassa_).†The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, “We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin.†The crime was committed “on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants,†and the
-prosecution was conducted by “Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place.†The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)
-
-In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff’s declaration that the pig killed the child and ate of its
-flesh, “although it was Friday,†and this violation of the _jejunium
-sextae_, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker’s
-offence.
-
-Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trochères, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place “under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells.†It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediæval courts, the chronicles of mediæval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediæval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare’s day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano’s invective against Shylock:
-
- “thy currish spirit
- Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter,
- Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
- And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam,
- Infus’d itself in thee; for thy desires
- Are wolfish, bloody, starv’d, and ravenous.â€
-
-That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its æsthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the “good old
-times†of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.
-
-The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediæval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D’Addosio, _Bestie
-Delinquenti_, pp. 23-5).
-
-In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left “such beasts without a good and sure guard.†Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, “a sow with a black snout,†“for
-the cruelty and ferocity†shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having “eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant,†was condemned to be “exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis.†The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (_Vide_
-Appendix P.)
-
-But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.
-
-There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed “for its demerits.†Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupré near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be “executed until death
-inclusively,†for having “killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont,†who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean Boullet. (_Vide_ Appendix Q.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.
-
-In 1474, the magistrates of Bâle sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake “for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg.†The _auto da
-fé_ was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his _Kurze Basler Chronik_, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Prättigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bâle.
-
-The _oeuf coquatri_ was supposed to be the product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and “death-darting eye†destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled “Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l’on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,â€
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon’s egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling “a small serpent coiled.†He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like “a hoarse cock†(_un coq
-enroué_), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(_Mémoires de l’Académie de Sciences._ Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)
-
-A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock επτεινάÏια, a name which would
-imply some sort of winged creature. It was “sighted like the basilisk,â€
-and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal qualities.
-
-In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that “it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet†(Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, § 197 in Giraud:
-_Essai sur l’Histoire du Droit Francais_, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.
-
-Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his “appearing invisibly at times†(_aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens_), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts--snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.
-
-It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to “close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue.†Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L’Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, _pauvres enfants qu’on veut rendre orphelins_, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin’s
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See Appendix R.)
-
-_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man’s dealings
-with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded “life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.†An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that “whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart.†[“Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt.†Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God’s method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.
-
-In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only “at the hand of man,†but also “at the hand of every
-beast;†and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that “if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten.†To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher’s meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.
-
-On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621, should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried “unflayed.†In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (_Vide_ Appendix S.)
-
-In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (_geistlicher Convent_) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Türler’s _Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern_ (_Zeitschrift für schweiz._ _Strafrecht_, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: “In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference _a bove ad hominem_.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God commanded that the
-‘goring ox’ should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man’s
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment.†The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.
-
-The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to
-each other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakôn and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikôn of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called ἄψῦχων
-δίκαι (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted before the
-Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to by
-Æschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly described
-in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux and the _Lexicon Decem Oratorum
-Graecorum_ of Valerius Harpokration.
-
-Strictly speaking, the term ἄψῦχων should be applied only to an inanimate
-object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called ἄφωνον
-(dumb); but this distinction was not always observed either in common
-parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point as formulated and
-expounded by Plato (_De Leg._, IX. 12) was as follows: “If a draught
-animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a combat
-authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain shall
-prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the public
-lands (ἀγÏονόμοι), as many as may be commissioned by the said kinsmen,
-shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond the boundaries
-of the country (á¼Î¾Î¿Ïίζειν, exterminate in the literal and original sense
-of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive a person of life, provided
-it may not be a thunderbolt (κεÏαυνός) or other missile (βέλος) hurled by
-a god, but an object which the said person may have run against or by
-which he may have been struck and slain, then the kinsman immediate to the
-deceased shall appoint the nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify
-himself as well as his next of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit
-(τὸ ὄφλον) shall be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it
-were an animal.†In the same section it is enacted that if a person be
-found dead and the murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by
-a herald on the market-place forbidding the murderer to enter any
-sanctuary or the land of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he
-shall be put to death and his body be thrown unburied beyond the
-boundaries of the country of the person killed. The object of these
-measures was to appease the Erinnys or avenging spirit of the deceased,
-and to avert the calamities which would otherwise be brought upon the
-land, in accordance with the strict law of retribution demanding blood for
-blood, no matter whether it may have been shed wilfully or accidentally.
-[Cf. Æschylus, _Cho._, 395, where this law (νόμος) is clearly and strongly
-affirmed.] The same superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage
-tribes to beg pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and
-to purify themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an
-act, the μίασμα of murder, as the Greeks called it.
-
-Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and “amid the loud execrations of
-the masses,†who seem in their excitement to have “lost their heads†as
-well as the hapless deities.
-
-When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
-
-Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his _Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae_, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer’s dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year’s
-incarceration in the Narrenkötterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkötterlein,
-Narrenköderl or Kotter formerly on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as “Menschenkäfige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Pöbels preiszugeben (zu
-narren).†Schläger: _Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter_, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were “by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death.†It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.
-
-On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be “punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence†(_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation,
-corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning
-with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and
-ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is
-wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to “wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man.†On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.
-
-A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy’s approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (_peâh
-hit nafre metes ne âbîte_), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-_Schwabenspiegel_, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. [“Man soll
-allez daz tötden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre.†§ 290.]
-
-Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as “severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children.†Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: “As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release.â€
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.
-
-The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, “according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country.†The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.
-
-When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also “his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,â€
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth “the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;†or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children’s teeth were to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul’s sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Blücher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.
-
-According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked “corruption of blood†in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.
-
-The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: _Schles. Chron._, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (_constitutio criminalis
-Carolina_), although in many respects an advance on mediæval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Döpler (_Theat. Poen._, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.
-
-According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the “sacra saxa,†by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the _motio termini_ or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.
-
-That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.
-
-For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that “the stranger
-within their gates†is their legitimate spoil, and has no other _raison
-d’être_. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.
-
-The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. “If a horse,†says Blackstone, “or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand.†If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.
-
-_Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man’s death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who “by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken.†“And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor.â€
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homœpathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer’s hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months’ imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.
-
-In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes--_pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum_--but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lüneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (_Vide_ Kraut’s _Stadtrecht
-von Lüneburg_, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)
-
-Blackstone’s theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the _Commentaries_ could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were “designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death,†are equally
-incorrect. In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.
-
-Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a _felo de se_ as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of “the
-mad Ajax,†who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.
-
-It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.
-
-Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
-
-A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.
-
-Mediæval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: _Si duo faciunt idem non est idem_ (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner’s sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade’s prescription of “hempen
-caudle†and “pap of hatchet†as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.
-
-Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster’s features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave’s cabinet of curiosities as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.
-
-In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: “You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk.†At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, “he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased.â€
-
-Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter’s wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-_auto da fé_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
-
-Döpler cites also the case of Stephen Hübner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
-
-In 1573, the parliament of Dôle published a decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comté to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; “notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase,†the people were empowered to “assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty.†The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children “even on Friday.†The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a _jour maigre_.
-
-Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas à Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.
-
-When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter’s, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body “as a pestilential thingâ€
-(_uti quoddam mephiticum_) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.
-
-From the standpoint of ancient and mediæval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediæval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homœopenal principle of _similia similibus
-puniantur_, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.
-
-Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Büchner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillée, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If “privation of mind†and “irresistible force,†says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then “partial vitiation of mind†and “semi-irresistible
-force†are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. “Partial vitiation of mind†is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a “semi-irresistible force.†But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-“absolute privation of mind†and “wholly irresistible force;†and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.
-
-The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.
-
-Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediæval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.
-
-But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category “all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity,†and “all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired.â€
-In order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.
-
-A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of “moral insanity†in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as “moral
-insanity†exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.
-
-Mediæval penal justice sought to inflict the greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger’s daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-“Malefiz-Gericht†or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,
-
- “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,â€
-
-was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: “I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order.†A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.
-
-Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called “Blue Laws†of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own “stubborn and rebellious sons,†or upon persons who “worship
-any other God but the Lord God,†had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.
-
-If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediæval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.
-
-A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.
-
-This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a “kind of
-menagerieâ€; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-“there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed.†In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.
-
-Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the æsthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.
-
-It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: “Have ye a government here?†and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, “Then I’m agin’ it.†Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine’s definition of man as “an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb,†applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race, temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.
-
-The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palæolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.
-
-In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta’s brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men’s hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.
-
-Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the _argumentum ad hominem_ in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the “Hottentot Venus,†examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.
-
-“The more advanced criminalists,†says Professor Von Kirchenheim, “are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles.†In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal, whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years’ imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal. Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediæval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: _Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur_. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo’s metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.
-
-Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-“education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts,†and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to “deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (_récidivistes_) together with their posterity,†and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.
-
-Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the _force majeure_
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man’s character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another, ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man’s
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.
-
-As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediæval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediæval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man’s will upon another man’s mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God’s special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.
-
-One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,--some
-point at which we are forced to say,--
-
- “O, that way madness lies; let me shun that.â€
-
-It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.
-
-A madman, says Coleridge, is one who “mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things.†But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who “of imagination all compact,†takes his fancies for
-realities,
-
- “Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
- A local habitation and a name.â€
-
-Coleridge’s definition includes also the mythopœic faculty, the power of
-projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.
-
-An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediæval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-“an effect,†says Morselli, “of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples.†What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.
-
-An additional reflection, that “must give us pause†in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.
-
-Mediæval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.
-
-It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man’s free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch of a deity “willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known,†no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions--the original sin of the theologians--and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the “election of grace†is by no means identical with salvation
-through the “survival of the fittest.†The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as “the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory,†may be and probably is “as filthy ragsâ€; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. “The best man,â€
-said Socrates, “is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself.†This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.
-
-Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (_Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zoöpsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of “showing off†play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls “that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob.†It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.
-
-If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediæval courts against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zoöpsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.
-
-Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted _quia
-peccatum est_ or _ne peccetur_; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as “ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them.†Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.
-
-The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
-
- “the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.â€
-
-If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.
-
-Schopenhauer maintained the theory of “responsibility for character,†and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person’s character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-“dives†haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.
-
-A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the _causes célèbres_ of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in _The Nation_ for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel _Le Comte de Monte Christo_, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.
-
-In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in “_l’espèce de volupté qu’elle
-éprouverait à commettre un crime_,†or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called “pure cussedness.†Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.
-
-Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours’ deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of “Guilty, with extenuating circumstances,†as the
-result of which the accused was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.
-
-After fifteen years’ imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer’s ethics, that “a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character,†what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal’s individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.
-
-There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological material
-which her profession placed in her hands?
-
-However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as “much delight†as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals “shrieking and
-groaning†on his tormentatore. “The physiologist,†says Claude Bernard,
-“is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover.†Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.
-
-The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that “there’s
-method in it,†is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.
-
-According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has “such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong.†This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no “defect of reason†nor “disease of mind†in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater “defect of reason†in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-“certifiably insane†persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.
-
-It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-_Salus socialis suprema lex esto._ Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.
-
-The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.
-
-If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the partially
-insane, especially those affected with “moral insanity†or so-called
-“cranks,†have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.
-
-From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso’s assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani
-matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.
-
-That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-_cujus pœnæ metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in
-riding from Cologne towards Düren, he and his companions saw in the vast
-forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves,
-as a warning to the rest of the pack: “Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram
-versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non
-secus quam duos latrones, furcæ suspensos; _quo similis pœnæ formidine a
-maleficio reliqui deterreantur_.†In like manner the American farmer sets
-up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add
-that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral
-character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority
-to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and
-original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta sæpe ratione utantur melius
-homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naudé at Paris in 1648; an
-enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a
-dissertation on the soul in animals.
-
-In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the
-Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiène de l’esprit_, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe’s
-_Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Frères_, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurélien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military _attaché_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles’ department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysées, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-_Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le
-Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang’s story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.
-
-That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.
-
-The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender’s mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediæval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
-
-
-A
-
-TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM
-
-Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO
-
-Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente _Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio_ signatum _Franciscus Faeti_ contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (_sic_) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata _Romaneti_ qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI EPISCOPATUS MAURIANÆ
-
-Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani cæterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et cætera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinæ potentiæ virtute præcibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinæ
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.
-
-Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum præcedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-cæterasque formalitates ad hæc opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinæ clementiæ et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.
-
- FRAN. FAETI
-
-Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R{di} generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.
-
- ROMANET
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.
-
-Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (_sic_) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... _Deus
-Deus qui contritorum_ et _A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis_ etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis _Qui
-contritorum_ et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-_Veni Creator Spiritus_ quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto _Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur_ etc. cum orationibus _Deus qui corda
-fidelium_ singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Vic.{s} et Off.{s} gen.{lis} Maurianne.
-
- FAURE
-
-Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.
-
-(_locus sigilli._)
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam _Rembaud_ producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-_Approbando_ etc. signatam _Rembaud_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULE
-
-Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam _Claudius Morellus_
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quæ impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciæ _cap. primo_ et ibi Gr. _De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib._ 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram_
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi _Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo_ quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturæ primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturæ vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus _actus activorum non operantur in patienti_ ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia § _Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili._ ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturæ dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi _Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium_ non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et æquitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur _Qui seminat metet_ ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. _In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum_ non tamen cequitur (_sic_) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quæ sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et pœnitentiam agat exemplo
-Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter pœnitentiam
-egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3. veniat populus et
-imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua sancta gratia et
-per merita sanctissimæ passionis excessum dictorum Animalium compessere
-et refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e vineis ejicient et non
-eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis consideratis evidentissime patet
-dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis ejicienda non esse attento quod solo
-instinctu naturæ vivunt et ita per egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem
-Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum
-monitorium requisitum in quantum concernit dicta Animalia revocari et
-annullari nec aliquo modo consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis
-concedatur nec etiam aliqui visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per
-Agentes in eorum supplicatione protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni
-meliori modo via jure ac forma salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac
-deffentionibus competentibus aut competituris humiliter implorato benigno
-officio judicis.
-
- PETRUS REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem _Etiam si cuncta_ et signatam
-_Franciscus Fay_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.
-
-Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulæ cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam _Fay_ dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in I.
-par. q. 26. ar. I. et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut cœteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in æquitate
-et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum creaturarum
-habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa bruta
-animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.
-
-Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.
-
- FRANC FAETI
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem _Licet multis_
-signatam _Rembaudi_ dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut cæteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et præsertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturæ
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (_sic_) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. I. dist. I. at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata _Fran: Faeti._ nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulæ parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: _P. Rembaudus._ ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suœ cedule et fieri recuisitis inhœrendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.
-
- P. REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum _Prunier_ adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiæ vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariæ et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.
-
-Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN
-
-Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.
-
-Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Françys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au conseil general suyvant la publication d’icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu’il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantité a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.
-
- L. PRUMIER
- _curial_
-
-MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-ALIA CONTINUATIO
-
-Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE AD JUS
-
-Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA
-
-_contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis
-Supplicata_
-
-Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori--cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente _Ut appareat_
-etc. signata _Claudius Morellus_--tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium--tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati _Daprilis_--ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni--testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis _Daprili_--cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente _Visitatio_ et signata _Claudius
-Morellus_--allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente _Etsi
-rationes_ etc. signata _Petrus de Collo_--tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis--memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587--ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis--supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata _Franciscus Faeti_--litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis--attestatione signata
-_Romanet_ sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii--cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente _Approbando_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata _Franciscus
-Faeti_ incipiente _Etiam si cuncta_ etc.--allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente _Licet multis_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi--testimonialibus signatis _Prunier_ sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium--memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi--ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.
-
-Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum
-super statu
-
- loci oblati p....
- quem locum....
- visitandum....
- mensem ut f....
- et nobis rem....
- fuerit provid....
- Mermetus vis....
- generalis....
- in civitate S....
- die decima....
- anno domini....
- octuagesimo sep....
- Petremandi Bertr....
- dictorum Scind....
- et egregii....
- dictorum Animal.
- ordinationem....
- acceptandum....
- facit die et....
-
-(pro visitatione III flor)
-
-_locus sigilli._
-
-Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.
-
-Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor--20 decembre 1587.
-
-Published by Léon Ménebréa in the appendix to his treatise: _De l’Origine,
-de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-âge contre les
-Animaux_, Chambery, 1846. Cf. _Mémoires de la Société Royale Académique de
-Savoie_, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.
-
- * * * * *
-
-According to M. J. Desnoyers (_Recherches sur la coutume d’exorciser et
-d’excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles à l’agriculture_,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.
-
-The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d’Eynatten, in
-his _Manuale Exorcismorum_, is as follows:--“Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem ✠, et per Jesum Christum ✠
-filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum ✠ ab utroque procedentem,
-ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis, aquis, si
-Dei providentia adhùc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis habitetis,
-sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis nocere
-poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhùc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.--Amen.†_Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae_, 1626, p. 1204.
-
-
-B
-
-II[4]
-
-DE L’EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES
-
-PAR GASPARD BAILLY
-
-Il ne favt pas mépriser les Monitoires, veu que c’est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l’Eglise se sert, qui est l’Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n’épargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s’attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont fréquens,
-pour preuue de cette verité. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu’on a
-excommunié les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeïssans aux commandemens de l’Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonné par la sentence de l’Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur procès. Au Siecle passé, il y auoit telle quantité
-d’Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu’elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent à l’Euesque pour
-les Excommunier, ce qu’ayant esté fait, le Lac fut deliuré de ces
-animaux.
-
-Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantité de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu’elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantoüan, si on n’y eût apporté du secours par
-l’Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblémes, sous
-l’intitulation _nihil reliqui_.
-
- _Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,
- Locustæ vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.
- Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;
- Qualia non Athilæ, Castrave Cersis erant.
- Hæ fænum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;
- Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super._
-
-On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu’il se leua vne si grande quantité
-de Mouches, d’vne Eglise qu’on auoit basti à Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu’elles faisoient, elles empéchoient à ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu’elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paué de l’Eglise.
-
-Nous lisons qu’en l’année 1541, il y eut vne telle quantité de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d’vne nuëé; qu’ayant mangé les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d’vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l’Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.
-
-On dit aussi qu’en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantité de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu’ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d’vne coudée d’auteur, et tellement épaisses qu’en volant
-elles leuoient la veüe de la clarté du Soleil, ces animaux firent un
-dégat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chassés par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.
-
-Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cité de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu’en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantité de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu’ayans mangé tous les fruits, feüiles, et écorces des arbres iusques à
-la racine, elles s’éleuerent comme vne nuëe; et tombées en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu’en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.
-
-Du temps de Lotaire troisième Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, blé, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans esté jettés à la Mer; il s’ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l’Air, que la peste rauageât grande quantité de monde en ce pays là. Voilà
-quantité d’exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur procés
-afin de s’en garantir par le moyen de la malédiction que leur donne
-l’Eglise.
-
-Premièrement, sur la Requeste presentée par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le dégat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportée, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur à ses bestioles pour se présenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et là deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, où
-elles estoient, et les raisons veuës et considerées, d’vne part et d’autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.
-
-_Requeste des Habitans_
-
-Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantité
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-blés, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel dégat aux blés,
-et raisins qu’ils n’y laissent rien, d’où les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommée par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.
-
-Qui les fait recourir à la Bonté, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, à ce
-qu’il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu’il a pleu à Dieu d’enuoyer pour l’entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.
-
-_Plaidoyer des Habitans_
-
-Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont à genouy les larmes à l’œil,
-recourent à votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aués des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessité de laquelle ils
-sont menacés, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n’épargnent ny
-blé, ny vignes; rauage semblable à celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoyé par Themis à Thebes, qui n’épargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous sçauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aués trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint à s’abandonner à des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, _nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla æequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus_: Témoins les Meres
-dont il est parlé au quatrième des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l’une de l’autre. _Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur._ La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu’elle est pleine
-de langueurs, débilités et foiblesses de cœur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.
-
- _Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,
- At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longè est._
-
-Et Auian Marcellin dit, _Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire_. Ie crois que vous aurés compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l’estat qu’il serait reduit si la faim
-l’accabloit.
-
- _Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,
- Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.
- Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.
- Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;
- Ventus erat, pro ventre locus._
-
-Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d’habits dechirés, et des visages affamés, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitié et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iousë, et en cét estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.
-
-Les Informations et visites qui ont esté faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du dégat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalités requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d’adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de fairé reflection, et à cét effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnées en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnées par nostre Mere Sainte
-l’Eglise, à quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.
-
-_Plaidoyer pour les Insectes_
-
-Messievrs, dépuis que vous m’aués choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalités, qu’on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m’étonnant fort
-de la façon qu’on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du dégat qu’on
-pretend qu’elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on sçait qu’elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer à ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu’elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberté de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.
-
-Qve l’adiovrnement laxé contr’elles est nul comme laxé contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu’on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans priués
-de cette lumiere qui a esté donnée au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tiré de la
-Loi premieree, _ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat_; et voyci les
-mots. _Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret._
-
-La seconde raison est, que l’on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu’vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portée sous le tiltre des instituts _de pœn. tem.
-litig._ Mais ces animaux ne sont obligés par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-façon, _non tenentur enim ex contractu_, estans incapables de contracter,
-_neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto_, moins
-_ex delicto, seu quasi_; parce que comme il a esté dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priués de son vsage.
-
-De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal à propos, _Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Je
-laisse à penser quest-ce qu’on pretend de faire ayant adjourné ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuées de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l’adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister _cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quæ
-consequuntur locum habent_.
-
-On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict, et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu’il est vray lors qu’il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, _In administratione suæ
-iurisdictionis_, mais non pas en ce cas, où la partie n’en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est décidé par la glose
-de la Loy 2 _ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent_, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite à propos L’axiaume qui dit _quod directè fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus_. Mais ce que je treuue plus
-estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d’Excommunication, d’Anathema et malediction, et à quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l’Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne châtie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peché, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d’auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu’il faut suiure, et ce qu’il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberté de prendre l’vn et laisser l’autre.
-
-On vovdra peut-estre dire qu’elles ont manqué en ce qu’elles ne se sont
-presentées ayant esté adjurnées, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-à cause de leur desobeïssance: Mais à cela on respond qu’il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n’y a point d’adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-_quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitimè citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo_, etc.
-
-De plus, si on prend garde à la définition de l’Excommunication, on verra
-qu’on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l’Excommunication est dite _extra Ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet
-communione, vel è quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechassés de l’Eglise, n’y ayans jamais esté,
-d’autant qu’elle est pour les hommes qui ont l’ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doüées d’aucune raison, et l’Apostre S. Paul
-_ad Corinth._ 5 dit _quòd de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus_, l’Excommunication
-_afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est_, cap. 1, _de sentent. Excomm. in_ 6. C’est pourquoy l’ame de ces
-animaux, n’estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchée par telle
-Sentence, _quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis_.
-
-L’autre raison est, _quòd facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licét consecutiuum sit repugnans statui_ suo cap. _de
-occidendis_ 23 q. 5 cap. _sicut dignum extra de homicid_. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-_fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum_. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont esté faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d’en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Cicéron dit
-au premier des Offices _principio generi omnium animantium est à natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant_. Par ces raison on voit qu’ils n’ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, _cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quòd secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minùs erit licitum homini_, veu qu’on lit dans l’Epistre de S. Iude, _cum
-altercaretur Michaël cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere_ Cap. _Si igitur Michaël_, 23. _q._ 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. _q._ 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s’est peché de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considérans en eux mesmes, _est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum_.
-
-Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous féra
-donner les mains, et persuadera à vostre Esprit, qu’on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d’Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononçant telle Sentence s’est s’en pendre à Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs péchés, _immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant_, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge _omnis Caro corrupit viam suam_. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissée, exilée, et
-reduite en tel estat qu’elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.
-
- _Protinus irrupit venæ prioris in æuum,
- Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verùmque fidésque,
- In quorum subiere locum, fraudésque, dolùsque.
- Insidiæque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,
- Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,
- Non socer à genero, fratrum quoquè gratia rara est,
- Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti
- Liuida terribiles miscent aconitæ nouercæ
- Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,
- Uita iacet pietas, et virgo cæde madentes.
- Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit._
-
-Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Procès, à quoy on
-conclud.
-
-_Replique des Habitans_
-
-Le principal motif qu’on a rapporté pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu’estans priués de l’vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis à aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre _cum mulier_ 1. 5. q. l. la _l. congruit
-in fin_. et la Loix suiuante. _ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis._ Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se présente maintenant à juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d’vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d’empescher
-qu’ils n’en commettent par cy-après, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-à vn crime commis, et permis afin d’empescher _ne crimen committatur_.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy _congruit_ sus cité, où il est dit qu’on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insensé du crime qu’il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu’il ne scait ce qu’il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu’il n’offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cét Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l’authorité du Chapitre _omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss._ ou il est dit qu’on peut
-deceller ce qu’on a pris si on ne la pas executé, afin d’y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmée par la glose _in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal._ qui dit qui si quelqu’vn s’accuse d’auoir Fiancé une fille,
-par parolles de présent; on pourra deceller ce qui a esté dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu’ayant espousé telle fille, si on nie
-de l’auoir fait, et on refuse d’accomplir le Mariage, _Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur_. Il este loisible de publier ce qu’on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu’on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l’adjournement est valable, d’autant qu’il est fait
-afin qu’ils ne rapportent du dommage d’ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu’ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre à ce
-qu’on a aduancé à sçauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommuniés,
-Anathematisés, maudis ny execrés; à cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donné à l’Eglise, l’ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l’Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, _omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quæ
-mouentur in aquis_, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s’il y a chose où elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c’est à la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; à sçauoir de l’Homme,
-qu’il a fait à son Image et semblance, _faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram_ et luy a donné le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crées _crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus cœli, et omnibus animantibus Cœli_; Aussi Pline en son Liure
-premier de l’Histoire naturelle dit _quod causâ hominis, videtur cuncta
-alia genuisse natura_. Les Jurisconsultes sont d’accord, _quod hominis
-gratia, omnes fructus à natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de vsur. et
-§. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis._ et Ouide descriuant
-l’excellence de l’Homme parle de la sorte,
-
- _Pronaque, cum spectent animalia cæetera terras
- Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri
- Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
-
-et vn autre Poëte,
-
- _Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus
- Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.
- Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,
- Segnem, atque obscænam, passuri strauisset in aluum._
-
-Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l’Homme dit _hominem tantœ excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimodè, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo verò, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quàm in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aër, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturœ suœ, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos videmus,
-hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc Terra, et
-Elementa, huic bruta præesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat cælum, hinc
-salutem bonumque procurant Angelicœ mentes_.
-
-Et se seroit vne chose, si j’ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priué, et que de chétifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, à l’exclusion de l’Homme pour qui ils sont
-destinés de Dieu. C’est sur ce sujet qu’il dit _Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodò posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea_.
-
-Et pour responce à ce qu’escrit S. Thomas qu’il n’est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu’en l’espece
-qu’on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et détruisans les fruits qui
-seruent à son soutient, et nourriture.
-
-Mais à quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu’on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantité de saints Personnages, ont Excommunié des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d’en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons continuellement, à
-sçauoir dans la ville d’Aix, où S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantité à cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d’Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu’vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arresté, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu’vn est piqué hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu’on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse à part quantité de passages de l’Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donné des maledictions aux choses inanimées, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu’on pourra voir au _Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2._ il maudit le Serpent _Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terræ_.
-
-De dire, qu’excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s’est s’en prendre
-à Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n’est pas s’ens prendre à Dieu que de recourir à l’Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu’il a pleu à sa Diuine Majesté de
-nous enuoyer, à cause de nos fautes et pechés; au contraire c’est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir à elle, lors q’on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.
-
-_Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal_
-
-Les defenses rapportées par l’Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu’on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d’Excommunication à la volée, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si
-agissant, que s’il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cét Aduocat est appuyé sur la règle de
-Droict, qui dit, _qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, pœnam non meretur_, et
-vrayement c’est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d’impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines à l’égal des offences, sans auoir égard à personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, _quàm abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viæ ejus_. C’est vne Mer profonde d’ont on ne peut
-découurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoyé ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient à leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.
-
-Ceux qui donnent l’aumosne sont toûjours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit _non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri_, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l’aumône aux pauures, _si non pauisti necasti, pascendò seruare
-poteras_, de mesmes la Loy _de lib. agnoscend._ repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens à ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinée à ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, _qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vità viuet_; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusèbe expliche de la sorte, _fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium_.
-
-C’est vn acte de Charité, que d’assister le pauures, _frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri_, dit Iosuë c. 38. aussi la
-récompense est asseurée, ainsi qu’escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. _venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum à constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis_.
-C’est vne œuure de Misericorde d’auuoir compassion de son prochain, ainsi
-que dit S. Ambroise _lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiæ, vt
-compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum possumus
-iuvemus, et plus interdum quàm possumus_ l’Hospitalité est recommandée par
-S. Paul _hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim placuerunt quidam,
-Angelis hospitio receptis_, et S. Augustin _disce Christiane sine
-discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne fortè cui domum clauseris, cui
-humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus_. L’ordinaire recompence qui suit
-l’aumosne est le centuple, _honora Dominum de tua substantia, et de
-primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et implebuntur horrea
-tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt_. Les abismes de la
-Diuinité ne s’épuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage Salomon, _fæneratur
-Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam reddet_. S. Paul aux
-Corinthièns Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, _qui administrat semen seminanti,
-et panem ad manducandum præstabit, et multiplicabit semen suum_.
-
-Seroit-ce point à cause des irreuerences qu’on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun égard à la presence de Dieu, _conduntur
-stupra, tractantur lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentiùs deniquè;
-in ædituorum cellulis quòd in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur_, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c’est là bien souuent où se
-donne le mot, où se prennent les assignations, où se lancent les
-meschantes œilliades, _Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius_, dit
-S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en Ægypte, le
-péché était consacré à Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu’on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peché ressemble au cœur, et
-la feuille à la langue, inférant de là que ceux qui allaient aux Temples,
-deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.
-
-Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu’on assistât au culte Diuin par maniere
-d’aquit: Mais qu’en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entièrement sa
-pensée, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d’actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu’on entendit parmy les
-Ruës aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l’on se tue,
-laissant toute autre œuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.
-
-Que si les Payens ont esté si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinités, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.
-
-Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n’y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s’il enuoit quelques aduersités aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouët: C’est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent détourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et pechés.
-
-Nous voyons ces habitans la larme à l’œil, qui demandent pardon d’vn cœur
-contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le passé, et
-employent l’assistance de l’Eglise pour les soulager en leurs nécessités,
-et détourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans menacés d’vne
-famine insuportable si vous ne prenés leur droit, et cause en protection,
-et faire déloger ces animaux, qui les menaçent d’vne ruine totale, à quoy
-nous n’empeschons.
-
-Concluans à cét effect, qu’il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d’execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d’ores en auant ils n’apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, à ce conuenables et accoustumées.
-
-_La Sentence du Iuge d’Eglise_
-
-In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci à certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, à territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visâ certâ informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.
-
-Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordiâ, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.
-
-In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub pœnis
-Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infrà sex dies, à Monitione in
-vim sententiae huius, à vineis, et territoriis huius loci discedant,
-nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod si infrà
-praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districtè praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradûs, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt faciliùs ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenùs bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulò abstineant.
-
-
-C
-
-Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.
-
-KLAG
-
-Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmäuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schädliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schädliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben könnten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wüssten zu
-ernehren.
-
-ANTWORT
-
-Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-männiglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewöhr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei----: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewöhr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen müssten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten mögen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-wäre, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fürbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen möge.
-
-URTEL
-
-Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was für Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schädlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmäuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmäder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger wär, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen möchte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen mögen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr’s _Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte_. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.
-
-
-D
-
-Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.
-
-Du vnvernünfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernüfftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ sömlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshäch/ so hat mir mein gnädiger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erlösers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. nächsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gärten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Bäumen/ Krüteren/ vnd von allen örteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd stätteuch fügend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen mögen an den früchten vnd nahrungen der Menschen vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfüllen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fürsprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnädigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnädiger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fürer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verflüchen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebürt/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begären von ewerem jeglichen zu
-bätten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerüffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.
-
-Job. Heinrich Hottinger: _Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti_ iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling’s _Chronica_, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.
-
-
-E
-
-Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.
-
-Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfürst.--Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-würdige, Unser lieber andächtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner nächst getanen Predigt, über die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhörlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und ärgerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und männiglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.
-
-Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhörer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevögel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,--dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden möge nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil--ist demnach unser gnädiges Begehren--zu eröffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behändigkeit und Wege, du für gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-tägliche und unaufhörliche Unkeuschheit unzählich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-ärgerliche Vöglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkümmert werden möge.... Das gereicht zur Beförderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnädige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.--Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr’s _Taschenbuch, etc._, 1845, pp. 227-8.
-
-
-F
-
-Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.[5]
-
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Sources of Information | Dates | Animals | Places
- ----------------------------+-------+-------------+-------------------
- Annales Ecclesiastici | 824 |Moles |Valley of Aosta
- Francorum | | |
- | | |
- Muratori: Rer. Ital. | 886 |Locusts |Roman Campagna
- Scriptores, iii | | |
- | | |
- Gaspard Bailly: | 9th |Serpents |Aix-les-Bains
- Traité des Monitoires | cent. | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, | 1120 |Field-mice |Laon
- p. 97, Mémoires de la | |and |
- Société Royale des | |Caterpillars |
- Antiquaires de France, | | |
- viii, p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 1121 |Flies |Foigny near Laon
- Monitoriis in Opusc. | | |
- missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 415. Note, Vita S. | | |
- Bernhardi, i, No. 58. | 1121 |Horseflies |Mayence
- Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272| | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1225 |Eels |Lausanne
- | | |
- L’Abbé Leboeuf: Hist. de | 1266 |Pig |Fontenay-aux-Roses
- Paris, ix, p. 400. | | | near Paris
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres | 1314 |Bull |Moiey-le-Temple
- Thémis, viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1320 |Cockchafers |Avignon
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1322 | |Not Specified
- _vide_ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1323 | |Abbeville
- Both cited by Von Amira, | | |
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | 1338 | |Kaltern
- Kulturgeschichte, ii, p. | | |
- 544; also Germania, iv, | | |
- p. 383. Von Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Delisle: Etudes sur la | 1356 |Pig |Caen
- condition de la classe | | |
- agricole, p. 107. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange. | 1378 | |Abbeville
- _Vide_ homicida. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1379 |Three sows |Saint-Marcel
- Savantes, Dec. 1866, pp. | |and a pig. | les-Jussey
- 476, _sqq._ From the | |Rest of the |
- archives of Côte-d’Or | |two herds |
- | | pardoned |
- | | |
- Charange: Dict. des Titres | 1386 |Sow |Falaise
- Originaux, ii, p. 72. | | |
- _Also_ statistique de | | |
- Falaise, i, p. 63. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1389 |Horse |Dijon
- Côte-d’Or | | |
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1394 |Pig |Mortaing
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 427. From MSS. in la | | |
- Bibliothèque du Roi | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 14th |Spanish flies|Mayence
- Tract. ii, Mémoires, | cent. | |
- cit., viii, p. 411 | | |
- | | |
- MS. of Judge Hérisson, | 1403 |Sow |Meulan
- published by Lejeune in | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 433; _also_ Loriol: | | |
- La France Eure et Loire, | | |
- p. 108 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1404 |Pig |Rouvre
- Côte-d’Or | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1405 |Ox |Gisors
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1408 |Pig |Pont-de-l’Arche
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- Louandre: Histoire | 1414 | " |Abbeville
- d’Abbeville | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1418 | " | "
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1419 | " |Labergement-le-Duc
- Côte-d’Or | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1420 | " |Brochon
- | | |
- " " " | 1435 | " |Trochères
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 1451 |Rats and |Berne
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | Bloodsuckers|
- p. 423 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1452 |Sixteen cows |Rouvre
- Savantes, iv, p. 476 | | and one goat|
- _sqq._ Dec. 1866 | | |
- | | |
- Gui-Pape: Decisiones | 1456 |Pig |Bourgogne
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, pp. | 1457 |Sow |Savigny-sur-Etang,
- 441-445. From Archives of | | | Bourgogne
- Monjeu and Dependencies | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches etc. | 1460-1|Weevils |Dijon
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Justice et | 1463 |Two pigs |Amiens
- Bourreau à Amiens | | |
- | | |
- Sauval: Histoire de Paris, | 1466 |Sow |Corbeil
- iii, p. 387. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris| 1470 |Mare |Amiens
- | | |
- Promenades pittoresques dans| 1474 |Cock |Bâle
- l’Evêché de Bâle. Journal | | |
- du Départment du Nord, | | |
- Nov. 1, 1813. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428. Johann| | |
- Gross: Kleine Baseler | | |
- Chronik. | | |
- | | |
- Schilling: Chronica (Zurich | 1478 |Inger (sort |Berne
- MS.), Hottinger: Hist. | | of weevil) |
- Eccles. Pars iv, pp. | | |
- 317-321 | | |
- | | |
- Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du |1479[6]|Inger | "
- Pays de Vaud | | |
- | | |
- Hist. de Nismes. Mémoires, | 1479 |Rats and |Nîmes
- cit., viii, p. 428. | | Moles |
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d’Abbeville | 1479 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia von | 1481 |Caterpillars |Macon
- Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Victor Hugo: Nôtre Dame de | 1482 |Goat |Paris
- Paris | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | 1487 |Snails |Macon
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 416 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 | " |Autun
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 |Weevils |Beaujeu
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d’Abbeville | 1490 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Annuaire de l’Aisne 1812, | 1494 |Pig |Clermont-les-Moncornet
- p. 88. Mémoires, cit., | | | near Laon
- viii, p. 428, 446 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la | 1497 |Sow |Charonne
- Penalité, sub verb. | | |
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Voyage Littéraire de deux | 1499 |Bull |Beauvais
- Bénédictins (Durand et | | |
- Martenne), 1717, ii, | | |
- p. 166-7 | | |
- | | |
- Archives de l’Abbaye de | 1499 |Pig |Sèves near Chartres
- Josaphat. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 434-5 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | 15th |Sow |Dunois
- 434 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | " |Caterpillars |Coire
- | | |
- " " " | " |Worms |Constance
- | | |
- " " " | " |Beetles |Coire
- | | |
- Louandre: L’Épopée des | 1500 |Flies |Mayence
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500 |Snails |Lyon
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500- |Vermin |Autun
- | 1530 | (Rats, etc.)|
- | | |
- Mémoires et Documents, publ.| 1509 |Vermin |Lausanne
- par la Soc. de la Suisse | | |
- Romande, vii, No. 97, pp. | | |
- 675-677 | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or | 1510 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or. | 1512 | " |Arcenaux
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 447 | | |
- | | |
- Mathieu: Hist. des Évêques |1512-13|Rats and |Langres
- de Langres, p. 188 | | Insects |
- | | |
- Groslée: Ephémérides, 1811, | 1516 |Weevils |Troyes in Champagne
- ii, p. 153, 168. _Cf._ |(1506 | |
- Théophile Raynaud: Opusc, | according |
- 1665, p. 482. Mémoires, | to some |
- cit., viii, p. 413, 418, | authorities) |
- 424 | | |
- | | |
- Habasque: Not. hist. sur le | 1516 |Locusts |Tréguier
- Litoral des Côtes-du-Nord,| | |
- p. 89 | | |
- | | |
- Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, | 1519 |Field-mice |Glurns (Stelvio)
- pp. 946-48 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la |1522[7]|Rats |Autun
- Penalité. _Cf._ Chasseneus| | |
- | | |
- Vernet in Thémis ou | 1525 |Dog |Parliament of
- Bibliothèque des | | | Toulouse
- Jurisconsulte, viii | | |
- | | |
- Papon and Boesius: | 1528 |Not specified|Parliament of
- Decisiones. _Cf._ Thémis, | | | Bordeaux
- viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1528 | " | " "
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1536 |Weevils |Lutry (on Lake
- contre les Animaux, p. | | | Leman)
- 505. From Grenier: | | |
- Documents relatifs à | | |
- l’hist. du pays de Vaud. | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1540 |Bitch |Meaux
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or | 1540 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1541 |She-Ass |Loudun
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Bailly: Traité des | 1541 |Grasshoppers |Lombardy
- Monitoires, ii | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1541 |Vermin |Lausanne
- | |(worms, rats,|
- | |bloodsuckers)|
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1543 |Snails and |Grenoble
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | Locusts |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1545 |Weevils |St. Jean de
- contre les Animaux, pp. | and | | Maurienne
- 544, 545, 556. De Actis | 1546 | |
- Scindicorum com. St. | | |
- Jul., etc. | | |
- | | |
- Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, | 1546 |Cow |Parliament of
- iii, p. 28, Registres | | | Paris
- manuscrits de la | | |
- Tournelle. _Cf._ Mémoires,| | |
- cit., viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1550 | " | " "
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1551 |Goat |Ile de Rhé
- | | |
- " " " | 1554 |Sheep (ewe) |Beaugé
- | | |
- Aldrovande: De Insectis, | 1554 |Bloodsuckers |Lausanne
- 1602, lib. vii, 724. | | |
- Mémoires, cit. viii, | | |
- p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyer, cited in Revue des| 1554 |Insects |Langres
- questions historiques, v, | | |
- p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567| | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1556 |She-Ass |Sens
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de | 1557 |Pig |Saint-Quintin
- Saint-Quintin, p. 143. | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | | |
- animaux, etc., p. 9 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1560 |She-Ass |Loigny near
- manuscrit | | | Châteaudun
- | | |
- " " " | 1561 |Cow |Augoudessus in
- | | | Picardy
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del | 1562 |Weevils |Argenteuil
- Vino. Regist. Epir. Par. | | |
- for May 8 | | |
- | | |
- Ranchin on Gui. Pape | 1565 |Mule |Montpellier
- Quaest., 74. Thémis, i, | | |
- p. 196. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1565 |Not specified|Parliament of
- viii | | | Toulouse
- | | |
- Louandre: L’Epopée des | 1566 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- Animaux | | | Paris
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1567 |Sow |Senlis
- Nationale of Paris | | |
- | | |
- Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, | 1572 |Pig |Moyen-Montier,
- 1811, ii, p. 374 | | | near Nancy
- | | |
- Lersner: Chronica, 1706, | 1574 | " |Frankfort-on-the-Main
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones Thémis, | 1575 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- viii | | | Paris
- | | |
- Haus-Chronik von | 1576 |Pig |Schweinfurt
- Schweinfurt, in | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | | |
- Kulturgeschichte, i, 156 | | |
- | | |
- Cannaert: Bydragen tot de | 1578 |Pig(?) |Ghent
- Kennis van het oude | | |
- strafrecht in Vlandern, | | |
- 1835, p. vii | | |
- | | |
- Derheims: Hist. de | 1585 |Pig |Saint-Omer
- Saint-Omer, p. 327 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist. du Dauphiné. | " |Locusts |Valence
- _Cf._ Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1587 |Weevils |St. Jean-de-Maurienne
- contre les animaux, etc., | | |
- pp. 546, 549 | | |
- | | |
- Fornery and Laincel | 1596 |Dolphins |Marseilles
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 16th |Weevils and |Cotentin
- Monitoriis, p. 482. | cent. | Grasshoppers|
- Mémoires, cit., viii, |(first | |
- p. 429 | half) | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | " |Snails |Lyons
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 415 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Weevils |Mâcon
- | | |
- " " " | " |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Louandre: L’Épopée des | " |Dog |Scotland
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Duboys: Hist. du Droit | 16th |Weevils |Angers
- Crim. de la France | cent. | |
- | second| |
- | half | |
- | | |
- Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor | " |Rats |Spain
- Navarrus: Consilia seu | | |
- Responsa, 1602, ii, p. | | |
- 812. Mémoires, cit., viii,| | |
- p. 419. Théoph. Raynaud, | | |
- cit., p. 482 | | |
- | | |
- Francesco Vivio: Decisiones,| 16th |Divers |Aquila in Italy
- No. 68. Cited by | cent. | animals |
- D’Addosio: Bestie Delinq.,| second| |
- p. 125 | half | |
- | | |
- Archives of Obwalden | " |Gadflies |Aargau
- | | |
- Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. | " |Locusts |Naples
- _Cf._ D’Addosio, cit., | | |
- p. 115. | | |
- | | |
- Sardagna: L’uomo e le | " |Horse |Portugal
- Bestie. Cited by D’Addosio| | |
- | | |
- Mornacius to Du Cange, | 1600 | |Beauvais
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Cow |Thouars
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Abbeville
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, | " |Weevils |Vercelli
- 1890, p. 141 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1601 |Dog |Brie
- viii. Lerouge: Reg. | | |
- secret manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Provins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Recueil d’Arrets | 1601 |Not |Parliament of
- | | specified | Paris
- | | |
- Charma: Leçons de | 1604 |Ass |Parliament of
- Philosophie | | | Paris
- | | |
- Guerra: Diurnali | " | " |Naples
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Joinville
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1606 |Sheep |Riom
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |Châteaurenaud
- | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Mare |Coiffy near Langres
- | | |
- | | |
- Lejeune: Mémoires, cit., | " |Bitch |Chartres
- viii, p. 418 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1607 |Mare |Boursant near
- manuscrit | | | d’Epernay
- | | |
- " " " | 1609 | " |Montmorency
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Niederrad
- | | |
- Voltaire: Siècle de Louis | " |Cow |Parliament of
- XIV, ch. i. Louandre: | | | Paris
- Rev. des deux Mondes, | | |
- 1854, i, p. 334 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1610 |Horse |Paris
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1611 |Goat |Laval
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |St. Fergeux
- | | | near Rethel
- | | |
- " " " | 1613 |Sow |Montoiron near
- | | | Chatelleraut
- | | |
- " " " | 1614 |She-Ass |Le Mans
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, etc.,| 1616 |Rats and |Langres
- p. 13 | | insects |
- | | |
- Anzeige für Kunde der | 1621 |Cow |Machern near
- deutschen Vorzeit, 1880, | | | Leipsic
- col. 102 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1621 |Mare |La Rochelle
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1622 | " |Montpensier
- | | |
- " " " | 1623 |She-Ass |Bessay near Moulins
- | | |
- " " " | 1624 |Mule |Chefboutonne (Poitou)
- | | |
- Döpler: Theat. pen., ii, | 1631 |Mares and |Greifenberg
- p. 574 | | Cows |
- | | |
- Marchisio Michele: Gatte | 1633 |Weevils |Strambino
- ed. insetti nocivi, 1834, | | | (Ivrea)
- p. 63 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Bellac
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1641 |Pig |Viroflay
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1647 |Mare |Parliament of
- manuscrit | | | Paris
- | | |
- " " " | 1650 | " |Fresnay near Chartres
- | | |
- Crollolanza: Storia del | 1659 |Caterpillars |Chiavenna
- Contado di Chiavenna, | | |
- p. 455 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gazzetta | 1661 |Weevils |Turin
- Litteraria di Torino, | | |
- Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Cotton Mather: Magnalia | 1662 |Cow, two |New Haven, Conn.
- Christi Americana, Book | | Heifers, |
- vi. London, 1702 | | three Sheep,|
- | | and two Sows|
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1666 |Mare |Tours
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |St. P. Lemontiers
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1667 |She-Ass |Vaudes near
- manuscrit | | | Bar-sur-Seine
- | | |
- " " " | 1668 |Mare |Angers
- | | |
- Annales scientifiques de | 1670 |Locusts |Clermont
- l’Auvergne, Vol. vii, | | |
- p. 391 | | |
- | | |
- Döpler: Theatrum pen., ii, | 1676 |Mare and Cow |Silesia
- p. 5 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1678 | " |Beaugé
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di | " |Weevils |Turin
- Torius, Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones, i, | 1679 |Mare |Parliament
- p. 914. Mémoires, cit., | | | d’Aix
- viii, p. 431. Boniface: | | |
- Traité des matières | | |
- criminelles, 1785, p. 31 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist du Dauphiné. | Before|Worms |Constance
- Thémis, viii | 1680 | | and Coire
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1680 |Mare |Fourches near
- manuscrit | | | Provins
- | | |
- Heinrich Roch: Schlesische | 1681 |Mare |Wünschelburg
- Chronik, p. 342. Döpler: | | | in Silesia
- Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 | | |
- _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1684 |Mare |Ottendorf
- | | |
- " " " | 1685 | " |Striga
- | | |
- Dulaure: Description des | 1690 |Locusts |Pont-de-Château
- principaux lieux de la | | | in Auvergne
- France, 1789, v, p. 493 | | |
- _sqq._ Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 412 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1692 |Mare |Moulins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi,| End of|Turtledoves |Canada
- p. 79. Mémoires, cit., | 17th | |
- viii, p. 431 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Meiners: Vergleichung des | " |He-Goat |Russia
- ältern u, neuern | | banished |
- Russlands, p. 291. | | to Siberia |
- _Cf._ Amira, p. 573 | | |
- | | |
- Registres de la Paroise de | 1710 |Rats |Grignon
- Grignon | | |
- | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | 1710 |Vermin |Autun
- animaux, etc., p. 23 | | |
- | | |
- Rinds Herreds Krönike and | 1711 | " |Als in Jutland
- other sources given by | | |
- Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Agnel: Curiosités | 1713 |Termites |Piedade no Maranhão
- judiciaires et | | | in Brazil
- historiques du moyen-âge, | | |
- p. 46. _Cf._ Manoel | | |
- Bernardes: Nova Floresta | | |
- ou Sylva de varios | | |
- apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom. | | |
- Lisboá, 1706-47 | | |
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1726 |Not specified|Paris
- Nationale of Paris, | | |
- No. 10,970. D’Addosio: | | |
- Best. Del., p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements contre | 1731 |Insects |Thonon
- les animaux, p. 508 | | |
- | | |
- La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 | 1733 |Vermin |Buranton
- _sqq._ Amira, p. 564 | | |
- | | |
- Rousseaud de Lacombe: | 1741 |Cow |Poitou
- Traité des matières crim. | | |
- D’Addosio: Best. Del., | | |
- p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ant. de Saint-Gervais: | 1750 |She-Ass |Vanvres
- Hist. des Animaux | | |
- | | |
- A Report of the Case of | 1771 |Dog |Chichester, England
- Farmer Carter’s Dog. | | |
- Amira, p. 559 | | |
- | | |
- Comparon: Hist. du | 1793 | " |Paris
- Tribunal Révolutionnaire | | |
- de Paris. _Cf._ Sorel, | | |
- op. cit., p. 16 | | |
- | | |
- Filangieri: Scienza della | 18th |Dogs |Italy
- Legislazione | cent. | |
- | | |
- Det. Kong. Danske | | |
- Landhusholdnings-Selskabs | 1805-6|Vermin |Lyö in Denmark
- Skrifter. Ny Saml. ii, 1, | | |
- 22. Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, | 1826 |Locusts |Clermont-Ferrand
- etc., p. 15 | | |
- | | |
- Gazette des Tribunaux, | 1845 |Dog |Paris
- Jan. 23, 1845 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1864 |Pig |Pleternica in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Krauss, quoted by Amira, | 1866 |Locusts |Pozega in
- p. 573 | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- " " " | " |Grasshoppers |Vidovici in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Desnoyer: Recherches, | 19th |Locusts |Catalonia
- etc., p. 15 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Allg. deutsche | | |
- Strafrechts-zeitung, | " |Cock |Leeds in England
- 1861, No. 2. Also Pertile:| | |
- Gli animali in giudizio | | |
- | | |
- Cretella: Gli Animali | " |Wolf |Calabria
- sotto processo in Fanfulla| | |
- 1891, No. 65. _Cf._ Amira,| | |
- p. 569 | | |
- | | |
- New York Herald and Echo | 1906 |Dog |Délémont in
- de Paris, May 4, 1906[8] | | | Switzerland
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-G
-
-Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.
-
- Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passée devant Guiot de
- Montfort, tabellion à Falaise, et donnée par le bourreau de cette
- ville de la somme de _dix sols et dix deniers tournois_ pour sa peine
- et salaire d’avoir trainé, puis pendu à la justice de Falaise une
- truie de l’age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mangé le visage de
- l’enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui était au bers et avoit trois mois et
- environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de _dix sols
- tournois pour un gant neuf_ quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
- cette quittance est donné á Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
- bourreau y declare qu’il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
- et qu’il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.
-
-Charange: _Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux_. Paris, 1764. Tome II. p.
-72. Also _Statistique de Falaise_, 1827. Tome I. p. 63.
-
-
-H
-
-Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
- scel des obligacions de la vicomté de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
- que par devant Bynet de l’Espiney, clerc tabellion juré ou siege dudit
- lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,[9] en la
- viconté d’Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
- homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
- Mortaing, c’est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
- paine et salaire d’estre venue d’Avrenches jusques à Mortaing, pour
- faire acomplir et pendre à la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
- lequel avait tué et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
- ladite viconté de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
- à estre trayné et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de _Co
- ... rin_, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
- dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paié, et en quita le roy nostre
- sire, ledit viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
- sellé ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C’en fut fait
- l’an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII{e}
- jour de septembre. Signé J. LOURS. (Countersigned) BINET.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_
-Mémoires, _ibid._ pp. 439-40.]
-
-
-I
-
-Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King’s proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.
-
- A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant à
- Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
- chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
- Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
- justice d’une truye qui avait devoré un petit enffant, a convenu faire
- necessairement les frais, commissions et dépens ci-après déclarés,
- c’est à savoir: Pour dépense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, au maître des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris à Meullant faire
- ladite exécution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
- maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, pour la voiture qui la mena à la justice, six sols parisis.
-
- Item, pour cordes à la lier et hâler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.
-
- Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.
-
- Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
- parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions être vray par
- ces présentes scellées de notre scel, et à greigneur confirmation et
- approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la châtellenie dudit
- lieu de Meullant, le XV{e} de mars l’an 1403. Signé de Baudemont, avec
- paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la châtellenie de Meullant.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Hérisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-des Antiquaires de France_. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]
-
-
-J
-
-Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.
-
- Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion juré pour le roy nostre sire en la
- viconté du Pont de Larche, fut présent Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
- prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
- avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
- homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
- somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c’est
- assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouvé (livré) le pain
- du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
- (Here the names of these prisoners are given.) _Item_ à ung porc
- admené es dictes prisons, le 21{e} jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
- au 17{e} jour de juillet après en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
- pendu par les gares à un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, à quoy
- il avoit esté condempné pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
- et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13{e}
- jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
- tué ung pettit enfant, auquel temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
- pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
- trouvé et baillé la corde qu’il esconvint à lier icelui porc qu’il
- reschapast de ladite prison où il avait esté mis, x deniers tournois.
- Du 16 Octobre 1408.
-
-[Derived from manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_ Mémoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]
-
-
-K
-
-Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.
-
- Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
- terres au conté de Bourgoingue, salut.
-
- Oye la supplication de frère Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
- prieurté de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
- le V{e} jour de ce présent mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
- Muet, dit _le Hochebet_, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
- pors des habitans d’icelle ville ou finaige d’icelle, et au cry de
- l’un d’iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
- sus audit Perrenot, l’ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
- comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu’il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
- suppliant, et par le père dudit Perrenot a esté trouvé blessier à mort
- par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confessè en la
- présence de son dit père e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost après il
- soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
- justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
- arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
- manière qu’il appartient, et encore les détient prissonniers tant
- ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
- que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
- truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessié. Et ledit prieur nous
- ait supplié que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
- trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivré. Nous
- inclinans à sa requeste, avons de gràce especiale ouctroyé et
- consenty, et par ces présentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
- justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l’ung des pourceaulx
- dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis à delivre,
- nonobstant qu’ils aient esté à la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
- mandons que de notre presente grâce vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
- user ledit prieur et autres qu’il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
- grâce.
-
- Donné à Montbar, le XII{e} jour de septembre de l’an de grâce mil CCC
- LXX IX. Ainsi signé. Par monseigneur le duc: _J. Potier_.
-
-[Published by M. Garnier in the _Revue des Sociétés Savantes_, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 _sqq._, from the archives of Côte-d’Or and reprinted by D’Addosio
-in _Bestie Delinquenti_, pp. 277-8.]
-
-
-L
-
-Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk’s office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.
-
- Entre le procureur de messieurs[10] demandeur et accusateur au
- principal et requérant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
- du quart d’abondant, d’une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accusé,
- deffendeur et défaillant, d’autre part.
-
- Veu le procès criminel, charges et informations, décret de prise de
- corps, adjournement à troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
- dict quart d’habondant, le recollement des dicts témoings et
- _recognaissance faicte par les dicts témoings de la chienne dont est
- question_, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
- conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d’habondant
- ont esté bien donnés pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accusé,
- attainct et convaincu .........
-
- Pour réparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
- estre pendu et estranglé à une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
- dressée aux lices du Marché aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
- lieu et endroict où les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
- auparavant ladicte exécution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
- assommée par l’exécuteur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
- les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brûlés et
- mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehendé en sa
- personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
- exécuté par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attaché à ladicte
- potence, et déclarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisqués
- à qui il appartiendra, sur cieux préalablement pris la somme de cent
- cinquante livres d’amende que nous avons adjugées auxdicts sieurs, sur
- laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononcé et exécuté
- par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
- Signé _Guyot_.
-
-[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Hérisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France. _Vide_ Mémoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]
-
-
-M
-
-Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, près des foussés du Chastelet de dit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, et ce le 10{e} jour du moys de janvier 1457, présens
- maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
- Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, André Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
- Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins à ce
- appellés et requis, l’an et jour dessus dit.
-
- Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
- dame dudit Savigny, demandeur à l’encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
- Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d’office dudit lieu de
- Savigny, demandeur à l’encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
- Savigny _deffendeur_, à l’encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
- honorable homme et saige M{r}. Benoit Milot d’Ostun, licencié en loys
- et bachelier en décret, conseïllier de monseigneur le duc de
- Bourgoingne, a été dit et proposé que le mardi avant Noel dernier
- passé, _une truye_, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
- présentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu’ils été prins en
- flagrant délit, ont commis et perpetré mesmement ladicte truye murtre
- et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
- de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
- Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
- causes d’office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit défendeur
- répondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit à
- souffisance, et lequel par nous a esté sommé et requis ce il vouloit
- avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
- ledit cas luy a esté faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
- première, deuxiéme et tierce fois, que s’il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
- justice ne s’en deust faire l’on estoit tout prest de les oïr en tout
- ce qu’il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et exécution de justice
- que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
- dit et respondu qui’l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
- ait esté procédé en la manière qui s’ensuit; c’est assavoir que pour
- la partie dudit demandeur, avons esté requis instamment de dire droit
- en ceste cause, en la présence dudit défendeur présent et non
- contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons à tous que
- nous avons procédé et donné nostre sentence deffinitive en la manière
- que s’ensuit; c’est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
- esté proposé pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert à
- souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuëment hue. _Aussi
- conseil avec saiges et practiciens_, et aussi considéré en ce cas
- l’usance et coustume du païs de Bourgoingne, aïant Dieu devant nos
- yeulx, nous disons et pronunçons par notre dite sentence, déclairons
- la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquée à la justice de
- Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise à justice et au dernier supplice,
- et estre pendus par les pieds derriers à ung arbre esproné en la
- justice de Madame de Savigny, considéré que la justice de madite dame
- n’est mie présentement elevée, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
- arbre esproné, et ansi le disons et prononçons par notre dicte
- sentence et à droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
- qui n’appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangiés dudit Jehan
- Martin, combien que aient estés trovés ensanglantés, l’on remet _la
- cause d’iceulx coichons_ aux tres jours, et avec ce l’on est content
- de les rendre et bailler audit _Jehan Bailly_, en baillant caucion de
- les rendre s’il est trové qu’il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
- païant les poutures, et fait l’on savoir à tous, sous peine de
- l’amende et de 100 sols tournois qu’ils le dieut et déclairent dedans
- les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, après la
- prononciation d’icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
- promoteur des causes d’office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
- advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demandé
- acte de nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyé, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
- notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
- la présence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommés, je lui ai ouctroyé, ce
- fait l’an et jour dessus dit et présens les dessus tesmoings. _Ita
- est._ Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est écrit:
-
- _Item_, en oultre, nous juge dessus nommé, savoir faisons que
- incontinent après nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnée par nous les an
- et jour, et en la présence des temoings que dessus, avons sommé et
- requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et
- se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recréance d’iceulx; lequel a
- dit et répondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
- en iceulx coichons; et qui s’en rapportoit à ce que en ferions;
- pourquoy sont demeurez à la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
- de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
- causes d’offices, nous en a demandé acte de court, lequel lui nous
- avons ouctroyé et ouctroyons par ces présentes, et avec ce ledict
- procureur de ladicte dame, à moy notaire subescript, m’en demanda
- instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroyé en la presénce desdits
- tesmoings cy-dessus nommés.
-
- _Item_, en après, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
- faisons à tous que incontinent après les chouses dessus dictes, avons
- faict delivrer réalement et de fait ladicte truye à maistre Etienne
- Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant à Châlons-sur-Saône,
- pour icelle mettre à exécucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
- dicte sentence, laquelle délivrance d’icelle trühie faicte par nous
- comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mené sur une
- chairette ladicte truye à ung chaigne esproné, estant en la justice de
- ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esproné, icelluy maistre
- Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant à
- exécution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
- laquelle délivrance et exécution d’icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
- Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demandé acte de
- nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte et donnée, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyée, et avec ce à moi, notaire subscript, m’a demandé instrument
- ledit procureur à luy estre donnée, je luy ai ouctroyé en la présence
- des temoings cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
- Ainsi signé Mongachot, avec paraphe.
-
-Nearly a month later, on “the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin†(which occurred on Feb. 2.), “the six little
-porklets or sucklings†were brought to trial. The following is the _procès
-verbal_.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussée de l’Estang dudit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
- Savigny, et ce le vendredy après la feste de la Purification Notre
- Dame Vierge, présens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
- Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.
-
- Veue les sommacions et réquisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
- damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, à Jehan Bailly
- alias Valot de advohé on repudié les coichons de la truye nouvellement
- mise à exécution par justice à raison du murtre commis et perpetré par
- la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
- esté remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
- d’iceulx coichons rendre, s’il estoit trouvé qu’ils feussions
- culpables du délict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
- les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
- instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
- déclairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et à droit:
- iceulx coichons compéter et appartenir comme biens vaccans à ladite
- dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l’usence et la
- coustume de païs le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte sentence, ledit
- procureur de ladite dame en a demandé acte, de nostre dicte court a
- luy estre donnée et ouctroyée. Avec ce en a demandé instrument à moy
- notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroyé en la présence des dessus
- nommés. Signé Mongachot avec paraphe.
-
-[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boëte 25{e}, liasse 1,
-2, & 3, etc.) _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]
-
-
-N
-
-Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.
-
-
- _Le lundi 18 avril 1499._
-
- Veu le procès criminel faict par-devant nous à la requeste du
- procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbé et convent de Iosaphat, à
- l’encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers èsprisons de
- céans, pour raison de la mort advenue à la personne d’une jeune
- enfant, nommée Gilon, âgée de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
- enfant avoit eté baillée à nourrice par sa mère: ledict meurtre advenu
- et commis par un pourceau de l’aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
- Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
- et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
- jurisdiction faictes à la requête dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
- sur ce conseil aulx saiges, _ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
- condampnés et condampnons en l’amende envers de justice de dix-huit
- franz_, qu’il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et à tenir
- prison jusqu’à plein payement et satisfaction d’iceulx à tout le moins
- qu’ils avoient baillé bonne et seure caution d’iceulx.
-
- _Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau_, pour les causes contenues
- et établies audict procès, _nous les avons condampné et condampnons à
- être pendu et executé par justice_, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
- seigneurs, par notre sentence définitive, _et à droit_.
-
- Donnè sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
- que susdicts. _Signé_ C. Briseg avec paraphe.
-
-[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]
-
-
-O
-
-Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
- Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l’église et monastère
- de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Prémontré, et les echevins de
- ce même lieu; comme il nous eust été apporté et affirmé par le
- procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbé et convent de
- Saint-Martin de Laon, qu’en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
- appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
- relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust éstranglé et _défacié_ ung jeune
- enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
- cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
- requérant à cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions procéder, comme
- justice at raison le désiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
- savoir et cognoitre la vérité dudit cas, eussion ouï et examiné par
- serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
- Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
- affirmé par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
- dernier passé ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
- Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
- Dizy ..., ayant délaissé en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
- renchargea à une sienne fille, âgée de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
- lequel temps ladite fille s’en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
- laissé ledit enfant couché en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
- ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et défigura et mangea
- le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tôt après ledit enfant, au moyen
- des morsures et dévisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
- siecle trépassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
- dudit cas, et afin d’exemplaire et gardé justice, avons dit, jugé,
- sentencié, prenoncé et appointé, que ledit pourceaulz _estant detenu
- prisonnier_ et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
- hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estranglé, en une fourche de bois, auprès et
- joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
- relligieux, estant auprès de leur cense d’Avin.... En temoing de ce
- nous avons scellé ces presentes de notre scel.
-
- Ce fut fait le quatorzième jour de juing, l’an 1494, et scellé en cire
- rouge; et sur le dos est écrit:
-
- Sentence pour ung pourceaulz executé par justice, admené en la cense
- de Clermont, et étranglé en une fourche les gibez d’Avin.
-
-[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in _L’Annuaire de l’Aisne 1812_, p. 88. _Vide_
-Mémoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]
-
-
-P
-
-Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
- royal et procureur au bailliage et siège présidial de Senlis, bailly
- et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d’Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
- M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
- faisons:
-
- Veu le procès extraordinairement fait à la requête du Procureur de la
- seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue à une
- jeune fille âgée de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyénor Darmeige
- et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
- trouvée avoir esté mangée et devorée en la tete, main senestre et au
- dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
- appartenant à Louis Mahieu, frère de la dite femme et son proche
- voisin;
-
- Le procès verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
- parrain et de sa marraine qui l’ont recogneu;
-
- Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
- dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la visitation faicte de la dicte
- truye à l’instant du dit cas advenu et tout consideré en conseil, il a
- été conclu et advisé par justice que POUR LA CRUAUTÉ ET FEROCITÉ
- COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE, elle sera exterminée par mort et pour ce
- faire sera pendue par l’executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
- estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
- chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses à
- tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
- de ne plus laisser échapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
- seure garde, sous peine d’amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
- s’ily échoit, sauf et sans préjudice à faire droit sur les conclusions
- prinses par le dit Procureur à l’encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
- ainsi que de raison, au témoin de quoy nous avon scellé les présentes
- du scel de la dicte justice.
-
- Ce fu faist le jeudi 27{e} jour de Mars 1557 et exécuté ledit jour par
- l’executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.
-
-[Dom. Grenier, _Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris_, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D’Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]
-
-
-Q
-
-Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupré, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.
-
- A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
- du Bailly du temporel de l’église & abbaye nôtre Dame de Beauprés de
- l’ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables & discretes personnes & mes
- tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbé & convent de
- ladite abbaye, salut. Comme à la requeste du procureur de mesdits
- seigneurs, & par leur justice temporelle qu’ils ont en leur terre &
- seigneurie du Caurroy eût été nagaires prins & mis en la main d’icelle
- leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant à Jean Boullet
- censier & fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &
- cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau étant aux champs & sur le
- territoiiere d’icelle église, auroit par furiosité occis & mis à mort
- un joine fils, nommé Lucas Dupont, de l’âge de quatorze à quinze ans,
- ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis à la garde de
- ces bestes à corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
- thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
- estre faite, & qu’il fut executé jusqu’à mort inclusivement par la
- justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
- & de la detestation d’iceluy. Sur quoy enqueste & information eussent
- été faites de la forme & maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
- procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
- que veu laditte enqueste & information & sur tout en conseil & advis,
- nous par nostre sentence & jugement, avons dies & jugié, que pour
- raison de l’omicide, dont dessus est touchié, fait par ledit thorreau
- en la personne d’iceluy Lucas, & pour la detestation du crime d’iceluy
- homicide, ledit thorreau nommé confisqué à mesdits seigneurs sera
- executé jusques à mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, & pendu à
- une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre & seigneurie dudit
- Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
- le avons condamné & condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
- scel à ces lettres qui furent faites & pronunchiés audit lieu du
- Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
- l’aisné, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes & subjets de mesdits
- seigneurs, Jehan Charles, & Clement le Carpentier, & plusieurs autres
- les seizieme jour de May l’an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
- Ainsi signé, Ileugles, ad ce commis.
-
-[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupré. Vide _Voyage Littéraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur_. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]
-
-
-R
-
-Scene from Racine’s comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.
-
-After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:
-
- “Venez, famille desolée;
- Venez, pauvres enfants qu’on veut rendre orphelins;
- Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.
- Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misère;
- Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre père,
- Notre père par qui nous fûmes engendrés,
- Notre père qui nous....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez, tirez, tirez.
-
- L’INTIME.
-
- Notre père, messieurs....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!
- Ils ont pissé partout.
-
- L’INTIME.
-
- Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Ouf! je me sens dejà pris de compassion.
- Ce que c’est qu’ à propos toucher la passion!
- Je suis bien empêché. La vérité me presse;
- Le crime est avéré, lui-même il le confesse.
- Mais, s’il est condamné, l’embarras est égal;
- Voilà bien des enfants réduits à l’hôpital.â€
- _Les Plaideurs_, Act III, sc. 3.
-
-
-S
-
-Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.
-
- Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
- Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,[11] da sie gleich
- hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
- worden. Vber welch vnerhörten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
- Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
- Leipzig sich darüber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
- Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
- abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen öden ort billig geführet,
- daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
- Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
- Schäfferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
- auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.
-
-[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-_Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit_. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]
-
-
-
-
-BIBLIOGRAPHY
-
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-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil spirits,
- 76
-
- Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, 180
-
- Addosio, Carlo d’, his _Bestie Delinquenti_ cited, 1, 4;
- his list of animal prosecutions, 135;
- on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, 159
-
- Æschines, cited, 172
-
- Æschylus, his _Choephoroi_ cited, 174
-
- Ahuramazda, 57, 61, 82, 176
-
- Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, 153
-
- Altiat, his poem quoted, 93
-
- Amira, Prof. Karl von, his _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ cited, 1-3,
- 137
-
- Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all
- incantations and excommunications, 4, 36;
- citations from the Bible in proof of their power, 25;
- render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake
- Leman, 27;
- turn white bread black to punish heresy, 28;
- fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, 28, 29;
- sold by the Pope, 30;
- hurled against noxious vermin, 37;
- made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, 37;
- differ from excommunications, 51-54;
- superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by
- Paris green, 53
-
- Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, 2;
- office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, 3, 5;
- as satellites of Satan or agents of God, 5, 6, 52-57, 67;
- personification of, 10, 11;
- their competency as witnesses, 11;
- origin of their judicial prosecution, 12;
- as born criminals, 14;
- tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and,
- 14, 193;
- instances of their criminal prosecution, 16, 18, 21, 37-50, 93-124,
- 134-157, 160-163;
- methods of procedure against, 31;
- whether legally laity or clergy, 32;
- punitive and preventive prosecution of, 33;
- their consciousness of right and wrong, 35, 247;
- false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, 40;
- can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, 51;
- items of expense in prosecuting, 49, 138, 140-143;
- not mere machines, 66;
- in folk-lore, 84;
- worship of, 85;
- imperfect lists of prosecuted, 135-137;
- burned and buried alive, 138;
- put to the rack to extort confession, 139;
- confiscation of valuable, 164, 189;
- unclean flesh of executed, 169;
- imputed criminality of, 177;
- criminals as ferocious, 212;
- mental and moral qualities of men and, 234;
- six categories of their criminal offences, 235;
- the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of
- men and, 247-252
-
- Anatolus, his “Geoponics,†133
-
- Angel, Emile, cited, 124
-
- Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, 168;
- its cruel doctrine of accessories, 178;
- on tainted swords, 187
-
- Angrô-mainyush, 57, 59, 61, 82
-
- Anthony, St., patron of pigs, 158
-
- Anthropologists, criminal researches of 211, 215
-
- Aquinas. _See_ Thomas
-
- Arcadius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Ashes, modern and mediæval use of vermifugal, 53
-
- Augustine, St., cited, 94, 106
-
- _Aura corrumpens_ in houses and stalls, 8
-
- Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, 75
-
- Avesta, on exorcisms, 36;
- on good and evil creations, 57;
- on mad dogs, 176
-
- Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, 109
-
- Azpilcueta, Martin. _See_ Dr. Navarre.
-
-
- Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, 84;
- his preference for black beasts, 165
-
- Bailly, Gaspard, his _Traité des Monitoires_ cited, 52, 92-108
-
- “Basilisk-egg,†10
-
- Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, 136
-
- Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, 183
-
- Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, 132
-
- Beasts, sweet and stenchy, 55
-
- Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, 9
-
- Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, 175
-
- Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, 212
-
- Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, 245
-
- Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, 28
-
- Bernardes, Manoel, his _Nova Floresta_, 124
-
- Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, 2, 17, 20;
- list of prosecuted animals, 135-137
-
- Bichat, his defective cranium, 217
-
- Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of
- unexpiated crime on persons and property, 6-8;
- his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, 73
-
- Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, 218
-
- Blackstone, on deodands, 186, 189, 192
-
- Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, 194
-
- “Blue Laws,†an advance in penal legislation, 209
-
- Bodelschwingh, his _bacillus infernalis_, 91
-
- Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, 127
-
- Boër, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, 153
-
- Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, 155
-
- Bonnivard, François, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, 38
-
- Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, 208
-
- Bougeant, Père, his _Amusement Philosophique_ cited, 66-69;
- 80-86, 88-90, 92
-
- Bracton, 167;
- on deodands, 186
-
- Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, 217-219
-
- Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, 187
-
- Buggery, instances of this “nameless crime,†147-153;
- she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, 150;
- in the Carolina punished with death by fire, 151;
- in the Mosaic law, 152;
- sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, 153
-
- Bull, executed for murder, 161
-
-
- Calvin, his conception of God, 59
-
- Canute, King, 178
-
- Carolina, the, its severe penalties, 182
-
- Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, 151
-
- Cattle, bewitched by bad air, 8
-
- Cervantes, 167
-
- Character, factors in the formation of, 219;
- responsibility for, 239, 243
-
- Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, 80, 225
-
- Chassenée, Bartholomew, his _Consilia_, 2, 21-23;
- distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, 18;
- equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, 20;
- his erudition, 24;
- his absurd deductions, 26;
- regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, 32
-
- Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, 174
-
- Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan
- and as agents of God, 3-6;
- capital punishment never inflicted by, 31;
- its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, 50
-
- Cicero, cited, 22, 101;
- his approval of atrocious penalties, 178
-
- Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, 10, 11, 162;
- nature and origin of its supposed eggs, 163-5
-
- Cockatrice, 12, 163
-
- Coleridge, his definition of madman, 228
-
- Corpses, prosecuted and executed, 110, 198, 199;
- cannot inherit, 110
-
- “Corruption of blood,†in theology and law, 181
-
- Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, 212
-
- Cows, executed for homicide, 169
-
- Cranks, execution of, 249-251
-
- Cretella, 17
-
- Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, 219;
- sentenced to death, 251
-
- Criminality, examples of imputed, 177-185;
- ancient and mediæval conceptions of, 200;
- punished for the safety of society, 211, 248;
- compared to vitriol, 212;
- supposed physical indices of, 213-217;
- casual and constitutional, 214-223;
- ativism the source of, 212, 215;
- the result of hypnotism, 223-225;
- due to many uncontrollable conditions, 230;
- motives underlying animal, 235;
- animals conscious of, 247;
- contagiousness of, 252, 256
-
- Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, 122
-
- Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, 30
-
- Cybele, invoked against vermin, 133
-
-
- Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his _Rerum Criminalium
- Praxis_, 16;
- citations from this work, 109, 146;
- regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy,
- 153
-
- Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra’s teachings degraded by the, 59
-
- Demosthenes, cited, 172
-
- Deodands, nature of, 186-190, 192;
- abolished in England under Queen Victoria, 192
-
- Devils, their damage to landed property, 7;
- multiplied by the spread of Christianity, 13, 80;
- destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, 68-70;
- incarnate in every babe, 70;
- maladies produced by, 72;
- modern inventions the devices of, 229
-
- Didymos, his “Geoponics,†133
-
- Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his
- assassination, 175
-
- Dogs, trial and execution of mad, 176;
- crucified in Rome for imputed crime, 177
-
- Döpler, Jacob, on sodomy, 152;
- on _Lex talionis_, 182;
- on vampires, 197
-
- Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, 57
-
- Draco (Drakôn), his law punishing weapons, 172
-
- Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, 253-255
-
- Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, 38
-
- Dumas, his _Count of Monte Christo_ cited, 240
-
- Duret, Jean, his _Treatise on Pains and Penalties_, 108
-
-
- Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime
- from a psychiatrical point of view, 170
-
- Eldrad, St., expels serpents, 50
-
- Electricity, execution by, 210
-
- Elk, as demon, 90
-
- Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, 172
-
- Erinnys, appeasing the, 174
-
- Escheat, in Scotch law, 189
-
- Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, 105
-
- Eustace, St., 56
-
- Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, 232
-
- Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, 3;
- sold at Rome, 30;
- properly speaking, animals not subject to, 51, 100;
- comical survivals of, 128.
- _See_ Anathemas
-
- Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, 27;
- applied as plasters, 72;
- superseded by conjurations among Protestants, 125;
- by Mohammedans, 137
-
-
- Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, 38
-
- _Felo de se_, a sort of treason, 190.
- _See_ Suicide
-
- Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, 253
-
- Field-mice, conjuration of, 133
-
- Flesh of executed animals tainted, 169
-
- Flies as demons, 28, 86
-
- Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, 136
-
- Fly-flaps, papal, 29
-
- Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, 198
-
- Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, 218
-
- Fox, diabolical nature of the, 56
-
- Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, 207
-
- Fricker, Thüring, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger, 116
-
-
- Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, 124
-
- Galton, on heredity, 239
-
- Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, 217
-
- Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers,
- 177
-
- Genius, to madness close allied, 228
-
- Görres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, 125
-
- Gratiolet, on the brain of the “Hottentot Venus,†218
-
- Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder,
- 9, 174
-
- Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, 132
-
- Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, 128
-
- Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bâle, 162
-
- Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, 250
-
-
- Harpokration, Valerius, cited, 172
-
- Harrison, Miss, cited, 187
-
- Hart, symbolism of the, 56
-
- Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, 252
-
- Hemmerlein, Felix. _See_ Malleolus
-
- Hens, crowing, 10
-
- Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and
- scientists, 232
-
- Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, 243
-
- Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, 249
-
- Honorius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Horses, condemned to death for homicide, 162
-
- Hubert, St., 56
-
- Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, 103
-
- Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild animals,
- 174
-
- Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, 223-226;
- as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, 225
-
-
- Idols, decapitation of, 174
-
- Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, 113-115;
- not in Noah’s Ark, 120
-
- Insanity, degrees of, 200-203;
- in Italian and German law, 204-206;
- difficulty of defining, 226-228;
- in English law, 246;
- moral, 250;
- as a shelter for crime, 256
-
- Insects, prosecution of, 37, 41-49;
- incarnations of demons, 86
-
- Italy, palliation of crime in, 203, 204
-
-
- Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, 240-246
-
- Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, 152, 165
-
- John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, 28
-
- Jonson, Ben, cited, 130
-
- Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, 74
-
- Jörgensen, cited, 17
-
- Joshua, his penal cruelty, 180
-
- King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, 55
-
- Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, 219
-
- Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, 171
-
- Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, 171
-
-
- Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, 238
-
- Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, 235
-
- Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by,
- 141
-
- Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, 163
-
- Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, 223
-
- Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, 169
-
- Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, 73
-
- Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, 254
-
- Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal
- justice, 167;
- inflicts horrible mutilations, 182
-
- Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison,
- 175
-
- Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, 237
-
- Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, 3, 64;
- dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, 22, 93, 94;
- prosecution of, 95-108, 136
-
- Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical
- possession, 71
-
- Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, 14;
- opposed to trial by jury, 185;
- regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of
- criminality, 213;
- on ativism as the source of crime, 215;
- innate criminality not eradicated by education, 223;
- compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of
- animals, 251
-
- Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, 74
-
- Lycia, punished by imputation, 180
-
-
- Majolus, cited, 86
-
- Maledictions. _See_ Anathemas
-
- Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg
- professors, 27;
- records a prosecution of Spanish flies, 110;
- his formula for banning serpents, 121
-
- Mangin, Arthur, cited, 16, 139
-
- Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, 60
-
- Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta’s skull to that of a savage, 217
-
- Mantegazza, Prof., his “tormentatore,†245
-
- Manu, Institutes of, 168
-
- Marro, on metaphors as facts, 216
-
- Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight
- beasts, 148
-
- Ménebréa, M. L., 2, 17;
- his theory untenable, 40
-
- Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, 85
-
- Mithridates, experiments with poisons, 244
-
- Moles, prosecution of, 111-113
-
- Monks, as landed proprietors in France, 158
-
- Monomania, frequency of, 227
-
- Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, 38
-
- Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, 176
-
- Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, 229
-
- Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, 170;
- barbarity of, 167, 180
-
- Murder, miasma of, 9, 174;
- weapons tainted by, 187-190
-
- Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, 176, 182
-
- Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, 64;
- in modern life, 228
-
-
- Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, 212
-
- Narrenkötterlein, dog sentenced to a, 175
-
- Nature, imperfection of, 61
-
- Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, 90
-
- Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, 63
-
- Nikôn, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence,
- 172
-
- Noah, God’s covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts,
- 168
-
- Novels, morbific influence of sensational, 253
-
- Numa Pompilius, quoted, 106;
- his law for protecting boundary stones, 183
-
-
- Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, 68
-
- Osenbrüggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, 10, 17
-
- Ovid, quoted, 101, 103
-
- Oxen, executed, 168;
- punished although innocent, 183
-
-
- Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, 179
-
- Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, 198
-
- Pape, Guy, cited, 108
-
- Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, 126
-
- Pardoning power, exercise of the, 248
-
- Parsis, their Dasturs, 59;
- co-workers of Ahuramazda, 61, 82;
- no doctrine of atonement, 63
-
- Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, 62
-
- Patriotism as a perverter of justice, 185
-
- Pausanias cited, 172
-
- Penology, man and beast in modern, 14, 193;
- mediæval and modern, 15, 200, 206-210;
- in Italy and Germany, 203-206;
- brutality of mediæval, 206-209;
- moral and penal responsibility, 210;
- still inchoate, 15, 219-223, 257;
- deterrent aims of, 211, 248, 249;
- law of the survival of the fittest in, 221-223;
- punitive and preventive, 237;
- its relation to psycho-pathology, 248
-
- Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, 66
-
- Perjury, retaliative punishment of, 182
-
- Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, 118
-
- Phlebotomy. _See_ Blood-letting
-
- Pico di Mirandola, quoted, 103
-
- Piety, market value of, 7
-
- Pigs. _See_ Swine
-
- Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, 29
-
- Plato, his theory of creation, 59;
- on homicidal animals, 173;
- on retributive and preventive punishment, 237
-
- Pliny, quoted, 103
-
- Pollux, Julius, quoted, 172
-
- Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, 148
-
- Predestination in theology and science, 232-234
-
- Prussia, barbarous punishments, 180;
- opposed to reform, 205
-
- Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, 172;
- but not corpses, 199
-
- Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, 256
-
- Puritans, their penal enactments, 209
-
- Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, 87
-
-
- Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, 56-58
-
-
- Racine, his caricature of beast trials in _Les Plaideurs_, 166, 361
-
- Ram, banished to Siberia, 175
-
- Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, 130
-
- Rats, prosecution of, 18-21, 136;
- friendly letters of advice to, 129;
- Irish custom of rhyming, 130
-
- Raven, an imp of Satan, 57
-
- Renaud d’Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, 20
-
- Responsibility, moral and penal, 210
-
- Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of
- superstition, 14
-
- Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, 73
-
- Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and
- gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, 251;
- regards animals as often more rational than men, 252
-
-
- Satan, his earthly sovereignty, 60, 70;
- the doctrine of his final redemption, 68
-
- Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, 113, 120
-
- Schläger, cited, 176
-
- Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, 187
-
- Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, 113-115
-
- Scholasticism, quiddities of, 33
-
- Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, 127;
- man’s responsibility for character alone, 239, 243
-
- Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, 178
-
- Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, 112
-
- Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, 147
-
- Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, 51;
- freed from poison by St. Hugon, 103
-
- Shakespeare, alludes to “be-rhymed†rats, 130;
- and a wolf on the gallows, 157
-
- Silius Italicus, quoted, 103
-
- Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, 253
-
- Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, 238
-
- Socrates, on self-perfection, 234
-
- Sodomy. _See_ Buggery
-
- Soldan, cited, 17
-
- Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, 128
-
- Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, 65;
- prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, 198;
- strangled in prison, 199
-
- Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, 190;
- condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, 191, 192;
- due to manifold influences, 229
-
- Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, 14
-
- Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, 28
-
- Swine, execution of, 16, 140-145, 149, 153-157, 161, 169;
- as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, 56, 165;
- Gadarene, 69, 91, 165
-
- Swords, tainted, 187
-
-
- Taine, his definition of man, 214
-
- Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, 236
-
- Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, 180
-
- Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, 213
-
- Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their
- defender as more industrious than the friars, 123
-
- Tertullian, quoted, 106
-
- Theognis, his bust punished for murder, 172
-
- Thomas à Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., 198
-
- Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, 53-55,
- 88, 101, 103
-
- Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, 90
-
- Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, 37, 94, 107
-
- Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, 1, 170
-
- Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law, 179-181
-
- Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the
- fig-tree, 25
-
- Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, 75
-
- Tribunals, proper office of criminal, 211, 232, 248
-
- Tritheim, on Satan’s invisible apparition, 166
-
- Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, 179
-
- Türler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical
- court of Berne, 170
-
-
- Vampires, superstitions concerning, 195-198
-
- Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, 178
-
- Venidad, quoted, 63
-
- Ventilation, “bewitched kine†the result of bad, 8
-
- Vermin. _See_ Insects
-
- Virgil, quoted, 26
-
-
- Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, 38-49
-
- Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, 75
-
- Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, 195;
- decree for their extermination, 198
-
- _Werther_, Goethe’s, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, 253
-
- Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, 125
-
- Witches in Judaic and mediæval law, on a par with animals, 145;
- rendered harmless by burning, 196
-
- Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, 9
-
-
- Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, 57-59
-
- Zoöpsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology, 237
-
- Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, 201
-
-
-_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] The name is also spelled Chassanée and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.
-
-[2] “Item: a été délibéré que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l’on contribuera aux frais au pro rata.â€
-
-[3] These animals are spoken of as _unvernünftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmäuse_. _Lut_ might be derived from the Old German _lût_ (_Laut_,
-Schrei), in which case _Lutmaus_ would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from _lutum_ (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediæval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.
-
-[4] The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of “monitoires†and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.
-
-[5] A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.
-
-[6] This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.
-
-[7] Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.
-
-[8] In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.
-
-[9] In modern French _pendard_ means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.
-
-[10] Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.
-
-[11] _Mietkuhe_, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9_s._
-
-EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9_s._
-
-LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Execution of a Sow.]
-
-
-
-
- THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND
- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
- BY E. P. EVANS
- AUTHOR OF
- "ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,"
- "EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC., ETC.
-
-
- [Illustration]
-
-
- LONDON
- WILLIAM HEINEMANN
- MCMVI
-
-
-
-
-_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Sources--Amira's distinction between retributive and
- preventive processes--Addosio's incorrect designation of
- the latter as civil suits--Inconsistent attitude of the
- Church in excommunicating animals--Causal relation of crime
- to demoniacal possession--Squatter sovereignty of devils--
- _Aura corrumpens_--Diabolical infestation and lack of
- ventilation--"Bewitched kine"--Greek furies and Christian
- demons--Homicidal bees, laying cocks and crowing hens--
- Theory of the personification of animals--Beasts in
- Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws--Animal prosecutions
- and witchcraft--The Mosaic code in Christian courts--Pagan
- deities as demons--Born malefactors among beasts--The
- theory of punishment in modern criminology _p._ 1
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
- Criminal prosecution of rats--Chassenée appointed to defend
- them--Report of the trial--Chassenée employed as counsel in
- other cases of this kind--His dissertation on the subject--
- Nature of his argument--Authorities and precedents--The
- withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and
- explained by Dr. Trench--Eels and blood-suckers in Lake
- Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of
- Heidelberg theologians--White bread turned black, and
- swallows, fish, and flies destroyed by anathema--St.
- Pirminius expels reptiles--Vermifugal efficacy of St.
- Magnus' crosier--Papal execratories--Animals regarded by
- the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of
- clergy--Methods of procedure--Jurisdiction of the courts--
- Records of judicial proceedings against insects--Important
- trial of weevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over
- more than eight months--Untenableness of Ménebréa's
- theory--Summary of the pleadings--Futile attempts at
- compromise--Final decision doubtful--St. Eldrad and the
- snakes--Views of Thomas Aquinas--Distinction between
- excommunication and anathema--"Sweet beasts and stenchy
- beasts"--Animals as incarnations of devils--Their
- diabolical character assumed in papal formula for blessing
- water to kill vermin--Amusing treatise by Père Bougeant on
- this subject--All animals animated by devils, and all
- pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them--Demons
- the real causes of diseases--Father Lohbauer's prescription
- in such cases--Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.--
- Recent instances of demoniacal possession--Hoppe's
- psychological explanation of them--Charcot on faith-cures--
- Why not the duty of the Catholic Church to inculcate
- kindness to animals--Zoölatry a form of demonolatry--Gnats
- especially dangerous devils--Bodelschwingh's discovery of
- the _bacillus infernalis_--Gaspard Bailly's disquisition
- with specimens of plaints, pleas, etc.--Ayrault protests
- against such proceedings--Hemmerlein's treatise on
- exorcisms--Criminal prosecution of field-mice--Vermin
- excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne--Protocol of
- judicial proceedings against caterpillars--Conjurers of
- cabbage-worms--Swallows proscribed by a Protestant
- parson--Custom of writing letters of advice to rats--Writs
- of ejectment served on them--Rhyming rats in Ireland--
- Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos--Capital
- punishment of larger quadrupeds--Berriat-Saint-Prix's
- Reports and Researches--List of culprits--Beasts burned and
- buried alive and put to the rack--Swine executed for
- infanticide--Bailly's bill of expenses--An ox decapitated
- for its demerits--Punishment of buggery--Cohabitation of a
- Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy--Trial of a
- sow and six sucklings for murder--Bull sent to the gallows
- for killing a lad--A horse condemned to death for
- homicide--A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural
- crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie's investigation of the
- subject--Racine's satire on such prosecutions in _Les
- Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat the law of the
- primitive man and the savage--The application of this iron
- rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit pig not to
- be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects--
- Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell sentenced
- to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection--
- Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment prescribed for mad
- dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of talion and decrees
- of corruption of blood--Examples in ancient and modern
- legislation--Cicero approves of such penalties for
- political offences--Survival of this conception of justice
- in theology--Constitutio Criminalis Carolina--Lombroso
- opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism--
- Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in English
- law--Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland--
- Blackstone's theory of it untenable--Penalties inflicted
- for suicide--Ancient legislation on this subject--
- Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in England _p._ 18
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
- Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
- Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner's sword the
- intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
- untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
- ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
- vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
- little children "even on Friday"--Pope Stephen VI. brings
- the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern
- conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
- jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
- pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
- these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval
- penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
- sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--"Blue Laws" a great
- advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and
- penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
- abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity
- of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic
- sense--Theories of the origin and nature of crime--
- Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the
- encephalon--Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat,
- Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly
- dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures
- proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not
- sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--
- Difficulty of defining insanity--Coleridge's definition too
- inclusive--Predestination and evolution--Criminality among
- the lower animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
- Schopenhauer's doctrine of responsibility for character--
- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret--
- "Method in Madness" not uncommon--Social safety the supreme
- law--Application of this principle to "Cranks"--Spirit of
- imitation peculiarly strong in such classes--Contagiousness
- of crime--Criminology now in a period of transition _p._ 193
-
-
- APPENDIX
-
- A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
- agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
- coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
- Amblevins _p._ 259
-
- B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
- Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
-
- C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
- against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
-
- D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
- the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
- of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
-
- E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
- commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
-
- F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
- of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
-
- G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
- Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
- of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a
- new glove _p._ 335
-
- H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
- acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous
- tournois from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for
- having hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child
- in the parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
-
- I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
- Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
- bailiff and the king's proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
- certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
- had devoured a small child _p._ 338
-
- J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
- Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont
- de Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and
- six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and
- to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
-
- K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
- Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of
- the Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
- Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
- which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
- the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
- sows _p._ 342
-
- L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
- the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
- be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
-
- M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
- 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
- sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
- the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
-
- N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
- prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
- Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near Chartres, against a
- pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
- this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
- for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
-
- O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor
- of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon,
- condemning a pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide
- committed on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
-
- P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
- and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
- Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout
- to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a
- girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
- said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on
- penalty of an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
-
- Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
- by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupré, for furiously
- killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
- years of age _p._ 358
-
- R. Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
- dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
- capon _p._ 360
-
- S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
- University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
- killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
-
- INDEX _p._ 373
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled "Bugs and Beasts before the Law," and "Modern and Mediæval
-Punishment," which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira's _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d'Addosio's _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler's _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Ménebréa, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenée, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.
-
-Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-"metaphysical aid" and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
-
-D'Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
-maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
-
-The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.
-
-It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-"godliness is profitable" not only "unto all things," but also, as
-mediæval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his "son Timothy" never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-_benedictiones locorum_.
-
-We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-"bewitched kine." European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
-
-The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediæval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-"transgressed in the thing accursed." It was the same horror of aiding
-and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-"basilisk-egg," or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.
-
-A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrüggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediæval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king's ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrüggen's
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bâle was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.
-
-The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind's eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.
-
-Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
-deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des göttlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
-
-It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
-
-In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin's _L'Homme et la Bête_ (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
-
-The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder's _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
-(Antverpiæ, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled "De Damno Pecuario" is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
-
-The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
-
-The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are "Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere," in _Miscellen aus
-der neuesten ausländischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Jörgensen's _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella's "Gli Animali sotto Processo," in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Ménabréa, and Soldan's "La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia," in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrüggen's theory.
-
-In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
-
-It is said that Bartholomew Chassenée,[1] a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l'Evêque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop's
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenée to defend them.
-
-In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenée
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.
-
-At a later period of his life Chassenée was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrières and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d'Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenée thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.
-(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]
-
-In the report of the trial published in the _Thémis Jurisconsulte_ for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenée conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.
-
-Chassenée is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.
-
-This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenée now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.
-"The principal question," he says, "is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent." He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: "First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through
-procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication." Chassenée's method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.
-
-The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediæval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.
-
-His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by "whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero." The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called "wisdom of ages," renders him peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.
-
-In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenée refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David's malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God's curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, "Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: "If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less" (_cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).
-
-An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: "It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false." According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that "drew on it the curse." The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: "Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart." As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediæval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, "for the time of figs was not yet."
-
-A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenée is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil's first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that "no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds," all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since "no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema." Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer's dissertation.
-
-Coming down to more recent times, Chassenée mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib's host, "all dead corpses." William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis
-ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and "no other remedy was at hand."
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-"deacons with fly-flaps," who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed "to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth."
-
-The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints'
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus' Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter's Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.
-
-In his "First Counsel" Chassenée not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)
-_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. § 5.] For this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word "conjurer"
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.
-
-Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenée thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediæval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.
-
-Chassenée also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that "things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them." Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where "Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass."
-
-Chassenée endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zoö-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenée insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that "sin is not imputed when there is no law." He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be "well-thought, well-said and well-done," not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata
-hûkhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.
-
-Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; "and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema." In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallicè urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenée, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man's sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.
-
-The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charançon)
-known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different
-names, amblevin, bèche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.
-
-Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-François Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: "Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our sins." Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A _procès-verbal_,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.
-
-About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Léon Ménebréa, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: _De l'origine de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-âge contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie_.
-
-It may be proper to add that Ménebréa's theory of "the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given," is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that "these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity."
-
-This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediæval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.
-
-But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before "his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official" by the
-syndics and procurators, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: "Formerly by virtue of divine services and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication."
-
-In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario
-moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).
-
-The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants' advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, François Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants' plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d'être_
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs' replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, "a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God." It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.
-
-On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.
-
-Meanwhile, in view of the law's long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d'Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs' advocate, François Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-"without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals," and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it "in good form and of perpetual validity," provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed "L. Prunier,
-curial," and stamped with the seal of the commune.
-
-But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an "Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien," containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the _procès-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till "the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation," which fell on the 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.
-
-At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis_). The "egregious Petremand Bertrand," in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.
-
-The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.
-
-In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: "_pro visitatione III flor._," by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then "_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._," which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-"_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._," three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop's official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_
-Appendix A.)
-
-In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man's labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.
-
-It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Père Rochex:
-Gloire de l'Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of
-Briançon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God's creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediæval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.
-
-Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-"waived" or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traité des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.
-
-One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (_s'en prendre à Dieu_). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediæval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.
-
-Thomas Aquinas, the "angelic doctor," in his _Summa Theologiæ_ raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man's
-subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother's womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of "the beauty of Israel"; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.
-
-It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan "instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore proper to be cursed," as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75),
-and adds "the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment." This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
-
-But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was "printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,"
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-"several fine moralities," and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes
-doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
-
- "Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind."
-
-According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
-
-Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: "Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious." "We are all," adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, "more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended." Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
-
-This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,
-_hûkhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhûkhta_,
-_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these "mighty opposites," the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that "dreadful idealization of wickedness" which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.
-
-Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast
-
- "Red in tooth and claw
- With ravin,"
-
-that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the
-
- "One far-off divine event,
- To which the whole creation moves,"
-
-consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.
-
-Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature's handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to
-
- "Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die."
-
-The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates Angrômainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (_speñtô mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer's)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.
-
-But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediæval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds'
-claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, "dire
-chimeras" and other "delicate monsters," there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Dædalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actæon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Mæra
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.
-
-Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: "I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought." In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to "preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits."
-
-This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Père Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: "_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_," and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes' _Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.
-
-If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.
-
-But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God's mercy or wrath is lost. "Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion." The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.
-
-Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been "prepared" for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two "exceeding
-fierce" demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, "Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?" This question has no
-significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Père Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.
-
-Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime. Some of them are engaged in "going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it," in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-"science falsely so called." Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to "forsake the devil and all his works."
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.
-
-The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.
-
-The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any
-mediæval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale
-Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_.
-
-That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of "a maiden of angelic beauty" in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stöcker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: "O, that Jew! Didn't
-he have to drink gall?" When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him "go to hell," which he forthwith did, "moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-'Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!' The voice was so sad,"
-adds the bishop, "that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil."
-
-Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, "Every knee in
-heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus," the fallen "Son
-of the Morning" retorted, "Not Luci, not Luci--never!"
-
-It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstätt. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-"Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops." In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession "is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church." Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.
-
-Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the "metaphysical aid" of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.
-
-Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that "what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it." But while affirming that "evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind," and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed, the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.
-
-The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on _Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklärung des Besessenseins_
-(_Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. "The priest," he
-says, "exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils." Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of "priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical means of healing," and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-_Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891_ (Saarbrücken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the "holy coat" in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called "documentary proofs," consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-"were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner." He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person's own mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole."
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole." Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people's lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum's assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on "Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition" in Appleton's _Popular Science Monthly_ for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).
-
-The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it "hath no skill in surgery."
-
-But to return from this digression, Père Bougeant's theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, "enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is the first act of God's vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell."
-
-Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angrô-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.
-
-There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. "What matters it,"
-replies the Jesuit Father, "whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned." The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about "des
-Pudels Kern."
-
-This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim _universitas non delinquit_ has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, _quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus_, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That "the devil is an ass" is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-_débris_ of exploded mythologies adrift on the stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as
-
- "Der Herr der Ratten und der Mäuse,
- Der Fliegen, Frösche, Wanzen, Läuse."
-
- "The Lord of rats and of the mice,
- Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice."
-
-The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zoölatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. "It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of an elephant." The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person's stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the _Dies Caniculuares_ of
-Majolus (Meyer: _Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters_, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.
-
-As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. "Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing." The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, "which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason." Furthermore, it explains why "all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase." Of the millions of
-germs, of which "great creating nature" is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing "any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils," which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. "This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects." The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.
-
-Father Bougeant calls his lucubration "a new system of philosophy"; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII. distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant's ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he "protests too much, methinks." In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.
-
-Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(_fürchterliche Zauberteufel_). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.
-
-A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-"fish or cacodemons" (_pisces seu cacodemones_), and maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenée on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.
-
-In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls "demonic infection" due to the presence of the _bacillus
-infernalis_ in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of _bacilli infernales_ which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Père Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.
-
-The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled _Traité des Monitoires_, already mentioned, treats "Of the
-Excellence of Monitories" and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-"one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them."
-
-M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as _post hoc,
-ergo propter hoc_. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which "came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (_i.e._ brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood." Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects "were as long as a man's
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure." Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew's
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of "inch of candle," and anathematized them "in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, "having six wings with two teeth harder than flint"
-and "darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm," laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of _De
-Civitate Dei_ as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.
-
-In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.
-
-The most important portion of M. Bailly's work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (_requeste des
-habitans_), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (_plaidoyer des habitans_), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (_plaidoyer pour les insectes_), the
-replication of the inhabitants (_réplique des habitans_), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (_réplique du defendeur_), the conclusions of the bishop's
-proctor (_conclusions du procureur episcopal_), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (_sentence du juge d'église_), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.
-
-The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:
-
-"Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Cæsar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the _Iliad_, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; _nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus_: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers, of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: 'Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.'" The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a "horse-load
-of citations" from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: "The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray."
-
-It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a rhetorical hotchpotch of "matter and
-impertinency mixed" as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.
-
-Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:
-
-"Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(_bestioles_), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.
-
-"Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph _Si quadrupes_, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: _Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret_.
-
-"The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute _De poen. tem. litig._ As regards these animals there is no _causa
-justa litigandi_; they are not bound in any manner, _non tenentur ex
-contractu_, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, _neque ex quasi contractu_, _neque ex
-stipulatione_, _neque ex pacto_, and still less _ex delicto seu quasi_,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.
-
-"Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(_qui ne porte coup_); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing _mal à propos_ or in vain: _Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Now I leave it to you to decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: _cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent_."
-
-The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: _quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet_. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as _extra ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction, as the apostle Paul says: "Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without." _Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est._
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (_quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis_).
-
-A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them "every green herb for meat," a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero's treatise _De
-Officiis_, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (_s'en prendre à Dieu_), who has said: "I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number."
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.
-
-The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. "It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(_d'ores en avant_) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted."
-
-"To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness." The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of "vile and paltry
-vermin." In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs' advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. "But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death."
-
-That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): "Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment," _i.e._ unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-"like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to "send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.
-
-The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.
-
-After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:
-
-"The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (_à la volée_), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it." [This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-"Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."] The bishop's proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. "It is truly a deep sea," he says, "in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (_lettres closes_)." He
-suggests it may be "because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors," and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (_liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium_). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.
-
-After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop's proctor is simply an
-_oratio pro domo_, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.
-
-The official begins by stating the case as that of "The People _versus_
-Locusts," declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-"by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,"
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help and solace. "Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:
-
-"In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere." If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech "Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils," to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially "the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and particularly offensive character." (_Vide_ Appendix B.)
-
-It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical _non sequiturs_ and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediæval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his _Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble_ (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: "_si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic._" Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(_Traicté des Peines et des Amendes_, p. 250; cf. _Thémis Jurisconsulte_,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that "if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed." The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, _lieutenant-criminel au siége
-présidial d'Angers_, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: _Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, à la Mémoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimées et aux Contumax_, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (_legales homines_) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that "a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality" could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man's memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.
-
-Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but "in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority," the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who "defended them with great dignity"; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.
-
-In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,[3] which damaged the crops
-"by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow." But "in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress," a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, "to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings."
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvæ and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that "a free safe-conduct and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy." (_Vide_
-Appendix C.)
-
-An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his "dearly
-beloved" are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-"with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm" and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by "a common
-prayer from house to house" to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: "Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah's ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case, however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o'clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice." The priest
-then exhorts his "dear children" devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (_Vide_ Appendix D.)
-
-There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger's trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be "utterly intolerable." This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.
-
-The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thüring Fricker
-to prosecute the case: "We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thüring Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (_brucorum_), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479."
-
-The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less "of the
-law's delay" than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: "Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:
-
-"We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. _Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi._"
-The phrase _das si beswärt werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers_ does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be _brutum fulmen_; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, "owing to our sins." Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.
-
-The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah's ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.
-
-Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: "By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God." Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: "O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."
-
-In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza's _Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna_ it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right "does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject." Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.
-
-More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhão, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God's creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an _argumentum ad
-monachum_ by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes'
-_Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes_, etc. Vol. V., Lisboá, 1747.]
-
-About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-"vergifteten Würmer," and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.
-
-In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Görres'
-_Historisch-Politische Blätter_ for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: "If you don't leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof." This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.
-
-The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to "the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature." This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By "fervent
-desire" merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man's body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-"for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute." Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as "doing in the spirit of the will," an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
-"the objectivation of the will." Indeed, Schopenhauer's postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.
-
-It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man's spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by "Augustus Duke and Elector," wherein he commends the
-"Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel Greysser," for
-having "put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God's word and of Christian devotion." But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (_durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege_); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See Appendix E.)
-
-A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on "Conjuring Rats," printed
-in _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_ (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, "Maine, Oct. 31, 1888," and addressed in
-business style to "Messrs. Rats and Co." The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they "can live snug
-and happy" in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use "Rough on Rats." This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.
-
-In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:
-
- "Ratton and mouse,
- Lea' the puir woman's house,
- Gang awa' owre by to 'e mill,
- And there ane and a' ye'll get your fill."
-
-In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:
-
- "A running stream they dare na cross."
-
-In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.
-
-It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or "rhyming" rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in _As you Like It_ Rosalind says in reference to Orlando's verses:
-"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember." Randolph declares:
-
- "My poets
- Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar,
- Rhime 'em to death, as they do rats in Ireland."
-
-Ben Jonson is still more specific:
-
- "Rhime 'em to death, as they do Irish rats,
- In drumming tunes."
-
-From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.
-
-In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(_la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:
-
- "Sortez, sortez d'ici, mulots!
- Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
- Quittez, quittez ces blés!
- Allez, vous trouverez
- Dans la cave du curé
- Plus à boire qu'à manger."
-
-The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:
-
- "Taupes et mulots,
- Sors de mon clos,
- Ou je te casse les os;
- Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
- Je te brûle la barbe jusqu'aux os."
-
-The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of "Callithumpian" music.
-
-Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Évêques du Mans_, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.)
-
-The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled [Greek: ta
-geôponika] and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by
-the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is
-given for getting rid of field-mice:
-
-"Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces." The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the "Geoponics"
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee's letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.
-
-In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: "In yonder
-village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)"; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebräuche aus Thüringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ's death and the world's
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
-
- "Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
- Protect this house and burn the rest."
-
-Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D'Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_
-Appendix F for a still fuller list.)
-
-The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (_Amira_, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.
-
-Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of "Phélippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens," for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-"having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (_étoit allé de vie a trépas_)." In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-"buried all alive" (_enfoui tout vif_), "for having devoured a little
-child in l'hostel de la Couronne." Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, "on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,"
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Würtemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-"powerful medicine" to stay the epizoötic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.
-
-Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (_L'Homme et la Bête._ Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that "the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt," is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. "The question," which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.
-
-In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man's
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a "master of high works" (_maître des hautes oeuvres_), as he
-was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
-
-We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinité_) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l'Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, _la châsse de la bannière_ (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
-
-In 1394, a pig was found guilty of "having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff." The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of "fifty souls
-tournois." (_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:
-
- "Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
- perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
- bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
- sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.
-
- "Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis."
-
-This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-"in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403." (See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.
-
-Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus "Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche," acknowledges the
-receipt, "through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (_vicomte_) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king's bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison." The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with "Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July," when it was hanged "for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child" (_pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant_). For the pig's board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account "ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape." The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by "Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche." (_Vide_ Appendix J.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged "until death ensueth," for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d'Or,
-was left hanging "for a long space" on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: _Histoire de Saint-Omer_, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Châlons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: _dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum_. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: _De poena bruti
-delinquentis_. Lugduni, MDCX.)
-
-On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become _participes criminis_,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (_Vide_
-Appendix K.)
-
-A peculiar custom is referred to in the _procès verbal_ of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be "hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet." The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. "From time immemorial," we are told, "the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked." The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.
-
- "'Twill be recorded for a precedent;
- And many an error, by the same example
- Will rush into the state: it cannot be."
-
-In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, "assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice." Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter's child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there "hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city." For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.
-
-Buggery (_offensa cujus nominatio crimen est_, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (_punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur_), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad, a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be "hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted." A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (_assommée_) by the executioner of high justice and
-"the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes." It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (_Vide_ Appendix L.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his _Ordre
-Judiciaire_, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(_multoties_) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-_Magnalia Christi Americana_ (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that "on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities." He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, "devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people." Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, "lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret." He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wünschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined that in
-burning the bodies the man's should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-"who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare," was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.
-
-For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive "together with the minutes of
-the trial;" his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master's crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore "they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature." This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by "Pintuel Prieur Curé" and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.
-
-The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire "according to common custom"
-("_so ein_ Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten." Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his _Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium_ (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that "if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(_Caviller oder Feldmeister_)." The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. "If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated, then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby" [Jacobi Döpleri,
-_Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen_, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]
-
-All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediæval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: "Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live." In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, _gravius_ and _gravissimum_; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Döpler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the _peccatum gravissimum_; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.
-
-It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, "since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog" (Döpl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, "inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts."
-
-But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of "murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny," and sentenced to be "hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esproné_)." Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but "in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother's crime." Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit "on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin," the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the _procès verbal_ has been preserved. (See
-Appendix M.)
-
-Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, "on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts." The pig was condemned to be "hanged and
-executed by justice." The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
-
-According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.
-
-On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having "strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife," and
-proceeded against "as justice and reason would desire and require."
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified "on their oath and
-conscience" that "on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (_de ce siècle trépassa_)." The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, "We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin." The crime was committed "on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants," and the
-prosecution was conducted by "Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place." The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)
-
-In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff's declaration that the pig killed the child and ate of its
-flesh, "although it was Friday," and this violation of the _jejunium
-sextae_, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker's
-offence.
-
-Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trochères, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place "under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells." It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediæval courts, the chronicles of mediæval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediæval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare's day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano's invective against Shylock:
-
- "thy currish spirit
- Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
- Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
- And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
- Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
- Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous."
-
-That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its æsthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the "good old
-times" of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.
-
-The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediæval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D'Addosio, _Bestie
-Delinquenti_, pp. 23-5).
-
-In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left "such beasts without a good and sure guard." Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, "a sow with a black snout," "for
-the cruelty and ferocity" shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having "eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant," was condemned to be "exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis." The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (_Vide_
-Appendix P.)
-
-But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.
-
-There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed "for its demerits." Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupré near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be "executed until death
-inclusively," for having "killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont," who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean Boullet. (_Vide_ Appendix Q.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.
-
-In 1474, the magistrates of Bâle sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake "for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg." The _auto da
-fé_ was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his _Kurze Basler Chronik_, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Prättigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bâle.
-
-The _oeuf coquatri_ was supposed to be the product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and "death-darting eye" destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled "Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l'on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,"
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon's egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling "a small serpent coiled." He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like "a hoarse cock" (_un coq
-enroué_), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(_Mémoires de l'Académie de Sciences._ Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)
-
-A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock [Greek: epteinaria], a name
-which would imply some sort of winged creature. It was "sighted like the
-basilisk," and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal
-qualities.
-
-In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that "it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet" (Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, § 197 in Giraud:
-_Essai sur l'Histoire du Droit Francais_, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.
-
-Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his "appearing invisibly at times" (_aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens_), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts--snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.
-
-It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to "close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue." Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L'Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, _pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins_, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin's
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See Appendix R.)
-
-_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man's dealings
-with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded "life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that "whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart." ["Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt." Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God's method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.
-
-In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only "at the hand of man," but also "at the hand of every
-beast;" and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that "if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher's meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.
-
-On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621, should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried "unflayed." In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (_Vide_ Appendix S.)
-
-In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (_geistlicher Convent_) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Türler's _Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern_ (_Zeitschrift für schweiz._ _Strafrecht_, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: "In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference _a bove ad hominem_.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God commanded that the
-'goring ox' should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man's
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment." The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.
-
-The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to each
-other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakôn and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikôn of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called [Greek:
-apsychôn dikai] (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted
-before the Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to
-by Æschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly
-described in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux and the _Lexicon Decem
-Oratorum Graecorum_ of Valerius Harpokration.
-
-Strictly speaking, the term [Greek: apsychon] should be applied only to an
-inanimate object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called
-[Greek: aphônon] (dumb); but this distinction was not always observed
-either in common parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point
-as formulated and expounded by Plato (_De Leg._, IX. 12) was as follows:
-"If a draught animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a
-combat authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain
-shall prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the
-public lands ([Greek: agronomoi]), as many as may be commissioned by the
-said kinsmen, shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond
-the boundaries of the country ([Greek: exorizein], exterminate in the
-literal and original sense of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive
-a person of life, provided it may not be a thunderbolt ([Greek: keraunos])
-or other missile ([Greek: belos]) hurled by a god, but an object which the
-said person may have run against or by which he may have been struck and
-slain, then the kinsman immediate to the deceased shall appoint the
-nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify himself as well as his next
-of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit ([Greek: to ophlon]) shall
-be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it were an animal."
-In the same section it is enacted that if a person be found dead and the
-murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by a herald on the
-market-place forbidding the murderer to enter any sanctuary or the land
-of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he shall be put to death
-and his body be thrown unburied beyond the boundaries of the country of
-the person killed. The object of these measures was to appease the Erinnys
-or avenging spirit of the deceased, and to avert the calamities which
-would otherwise be brought upon the land, in accordance with the strict
-law of retribution demanding blood for blood, no matter whether it may
-have been shed wilfully or accidentally. [Cf. Æschylus, _Cho._, 395, where
-this law ([Greek: nomos]) is clearly and strongly affirmed.] The same
-superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage tribes to beg
-pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and to purify
-themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an act, the
-[Greek: miasma] of murder, as the Greeks called it.
-
-Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and "amid the loud execrations of
-the masses," who seem in their excitement to have "lost their heads" as
-well as the hapless deities.
-
-When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
-
-Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his _Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae_, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer's dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year's
-incarceration in the Narrenkötterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkötterlein,
-Narrenköderl or Kotter formerly on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as "Menschenkäfige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Pöbels preiszugeben (zu
-narren)." Schläger: _Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter_, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were "by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death." It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.
-
-On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be "punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence" (_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation,
-corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning
-with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and
-ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is
-wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to "wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man." On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.
-
-A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy's approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (_peâh
-hit nafre metes ne âbîte_), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-_Schwabenspiegel_, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. ["Man soll
-allez daz tötden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre." § 290.]
-
-Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as "severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children." Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: "As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release."
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.
-
-The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, "according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country." The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.
-
-When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also "his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,"
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth "the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;" or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children's teeth were to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul's sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Blücher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.
-
-According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked "corruption of blood" in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.
-
-The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: _Schles. Chron._, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (_constitutio criminalis
-Carolina_), although in many respects an advance on mediæval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Döpler (_Theat. Poen._, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.
-
-According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the "sacra saxa," by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the _motio termini_ or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.
-
-That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.
-
-For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that "the stranger
-within their gates" is their legitimate spoil, and has no other _raison
-d'être_. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.
-
-The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. "If a horse," says Blackstone, "or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand." If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.
-
-_Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man's death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who "by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken." "And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor."
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homoepathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer's hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months' imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.
-
-In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes--_pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum_--but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lüneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (_Vide_ Kraut's _Stadtrecht
-von Lüneburg_, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)
-
-Blackstone's theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the _Commentaries_ could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were "designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death," are equally
-incorrect. In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.
-
-Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a _felo de se_ as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of "the
-mad Ajax," who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.
-
-It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.
-
-Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
-
-A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.
-
-Mediæval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: _Si duo faciunt idem non est idem_ (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner's sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade's prescription of "hempen
-caudle" and "pap of hatchet" as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.
-
-Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster's features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave's cabinet of curiosities as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.
-
-In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: "You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk." At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, "he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased."
-
-Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter's wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-_auto da fé_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
-
-Döpler cites also the case of Stephen Hübner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
-
-In 1573, the parliament of Dôle published a decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comté to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; "notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase," the people were empowered to "assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty." The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children "even on Friday." The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a _jour maigre_.
-
-Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas à Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.
-
-When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter's, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body "as a pestilential thing"
-(_uti quoddam mephiticum_) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.
-
-From the standpoint of ancient and mediæval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediæval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homoeopenal principle of _similia similibus
-puniantur_, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.
-
-Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Büchner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillée, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If "privation of mind" and "irresistible force," says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then "partial vitiation of mind" and "semi-irresistible
-force" are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. "Partial vitiation of mind" is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a "semi-irresistible force." But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-"absolute privation of mind" and "wholly irresistible force;" and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.
-
-The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.
-
-Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediæval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.
-
-But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category "all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity," and "all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired."
-In order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.
-
-A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of "moral insanity" in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as "moral
-insanity" exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.
-
-Mediæval penal justice sought to inflict the greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger's daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-"Malefiz-Gericht" or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,
-
- "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,"
-
-was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: "I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order." A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.
-
-Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called "Blue Laws" of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own "stubborn and rebellious sons," or upon persons who "worship
-any other God but the Lord God," had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.
-
-If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediæval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.
-
-A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.
-
-This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a "kind of
-menagerie"; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-"there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed." In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.
-
-Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the æsthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.
-
-It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: "Have ye a government here?" and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, "Then I'm agin' it." Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine's definition of man as "an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb," applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race, temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.
-
-The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palæolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.
-
-In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta's brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men's hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.
-
-Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the _argumentum ad hominem_ in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the "Hottentot Venus," examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.
-
-"The more advanced criminalists," says Professor Von Kirchenheim, "are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles." In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal, whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years' imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal. Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediæval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: _Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur_. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo's metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.
-
-Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-"education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts," and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to "deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (_récidivistes_) together with their posterity," and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.
-
-Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the _force majeure_
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man's character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another, ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man's
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.
-
-As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediæval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediæval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man's will upon another man's mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God's special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.
-
-One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,--some
-point at which we are forced to say,--
-
- "O, that way madness lies; let me shun that."
-
-It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.
-
-A madman, says Coleridge, is one who "mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things." But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who "of imagination all compact," takes his fancies for
-realities,
-
- "Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
- A local habitation and a name."
-
-Coleridge's definition includes also the mythopoeic faculty, the power of
-projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.
-
-An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediæval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-"an effect," says Morselli, "of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples." What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.
-
-An additional reflection, that "must give us pause" in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.
-
-Mediæval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.
-
-It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man's free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch of a deity "willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known," no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions--the original sin of the theologians--and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the "election of grace" is by no means identical with salvation
-through the "survival of the fittest." The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as "the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory," may be and probably is "as filthy rags"; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. "The best man,"
-said Socrates, "is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself." This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.
-
-Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (_Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zoöpsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of "showing off" play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls "that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob." It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.
-
-If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediæval courts against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zoöpsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.
-
-Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted _quia
-peccatum est_ or _ne peccetur_; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as "ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them." Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.
-
-The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
-
- "the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
-
-If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.
-
-Schopenhauer maintained the theory of "responsibility for character," and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person's character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-"dives" haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.
-
-A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the _causes célèbres_ of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in _The Nation_ for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel _Le Comte de Monte Christo_, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.
-
-In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in "_l'espèce de volupté qu'elle
-éprouverait à commettre un crime_," or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called "pure cussedness." Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.
-
-Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours' deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances," as the
-result of which the accused was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.
-
-After fifteen years' imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer's ethics, that "a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character," what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal's individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.
-
-There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological material
-which her profession placed in her hands?
-
-However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as "much delight" as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals "shrieking and
-groaning" on his tormentatore. "The physiologist," says Claude Bernard,
-"is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover." Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.
-
-The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that "there's
-method in it," is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.
-
-According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has "such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong." This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no "defect of reason" nor "disease of mind" in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater "defect of reason" in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-"certifiably insane" persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.
-
-It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-_Salus socialis suprema lex esto._ Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.
-
-The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.
-
-If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the partially
-insane, especially those affected with "moral insanity" or so-called
-"cranks," have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.
-
-From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso's assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani
-matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.
-
-That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-_cujus poenæ metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in
-riding from Cologne towards Düren, he and his companions saw in the vast
-forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves,
-as a warning to the rest of the pack: "Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram
-versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non
-secus quam duos latrones, furcæ suspensos; _quo similis poenæ formidine a
-maleficio reliqui deterreantur_." In like manner the American farmer sets
-up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add
-that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral
-character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority
-to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and
-original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta sæpe ratione utantur melius
-homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naudé at Paris in 1648; an
-enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a
-dissertation on the soul in animals.
-
-In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the
-Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiène de l'esprit_, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe's
-_Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Frères_, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurélien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military _attaché_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles' department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysées, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-_Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le
-Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang's story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.
-
-That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.
-
-The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender's mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediæval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
-
-
-A
-
-TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM
-
-Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO
-
-Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente _Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio_ signatum _Franciscus Faeti_ contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (_sic_) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata _Romaneti_ qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI EPISCOPATUS MAURIANÆ
-
-Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani cæterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et cætera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinæ potentiæ virtute præcibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinæ
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.
-
-Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum præcedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-cæterasque formalitates ad hæc opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinæ clementiæ et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.
-
- FRAN. FAETI
-
-Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R{di} generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.
-
- ROMANET
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.
-
-Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (_sic_) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... _Deus
-Deus qui contritorum_ et _A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis_ etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis _Qui
-contritorum_ et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-_Veni Creator Spiritus_ quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto _Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur_ etc. cum orationibus _Deus qui corda
-fidelium_ singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Vic.{s} et Off.{s} gen.{lis} Maurianne.
-
- FAURE
-
-Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.
-
-(_locus sigilli._)
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam _Rembaud_ producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-_Approbando_ etc. signatam _Rembaud_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULE
-
-Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam _Claudius Morellus_
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quæ impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciæ _cap. primo_ et ibi Gr. _De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib._ 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram_
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi _Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo_ quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturæ primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturæ vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus _actus activorum non operantur in patienti_ ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia § _Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili._ ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturæ dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi _Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium_ non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et æquitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur _Qui seminat metet_ ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. _In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum_ non tamen cequitur (_sic_) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quæ sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et poenitentiam agat exemplo
-Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter poenitentiam
-egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3. veniat populus et
-imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua sancta gratia et
-per merita sanctissimæ passionis excessum dictorum Animalium compessere
-et refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e vineis ejicient et non
-eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis consideratis evidentissime patet
-dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis ejicienda non esse attento quod solo
-instinctu naturæ vivunt et ita per egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem
-Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum
-monitorium requisitum in quantum concernit dicta Animalia revocari et
-annullari nec aliquo modo consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis
-concedatur nec etiam aliqui visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per
-Agentes in eorum supplicatione protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni
-meliori modo via jure ac forma salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac
-deffentionibus competentibus aut competituris humiliter implorato benigno
-officio judicis.
-
- PETRUS REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem _Etiam si cuncta_ et signatam
-_Franciscus Fay_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.
-
-Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulæ cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam _Fay_ dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in I.
-par. q. 26. ar. I. et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut coeteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in
-æquitate et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum
-creaturarum habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa
-bruta animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.
-
-Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.
-
- FRANC FAETI
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem _Licet multis_
-signatam _Rembaudi_ dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULÆ
-
-Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut cæteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et præsertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturæ
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (_sic_) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. I. dist. I. at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata _Fran: Faeti._ nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulæ parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: _P. Rembaudus._ ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suoe cedule et fieri recuisitis inhoerendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.
-
- P. REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum _Prunier_ adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiæ vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariæ et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.
-
-Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN
-
-Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.
-
-Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Françys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au conseil general suyvant la publication d'icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu'il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantité a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.
-
- L. PRUMIER
- _curial_
-
-MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-ALIA CONTINUATIO
-
-Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE AD JUS
-
-Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA
-
-_contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis
-Supplicata_
-
-Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori--cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente _Ut appareat_
-etc. signata _Claudius Morellus_--tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium--tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati _Daprilis_--ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni--testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis _Daprili_--cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente _Visitatio_ et signata _Claudius
-Morellus_--allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente _Etsi
-rationes_ etc. signata _Petrus de Collo_--tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis--memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587--ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis--supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata _Franciscus Faeti_--litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis--attestatione signata
-_Romanet_ sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii--cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente _Approbando_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata _Franciscus
-Faeti_ incipiente _Etiam si cuncta_ etc.--allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente _Licet multis_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi--testimonialibus signatis _Prunier_ sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium--memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi--ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.
-
-Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum
-super statu
-
- loci oblati p....
- quem locum....
- visitandum....
- mensem ut f....
- et nobis rem....
- fuerit provid....
- Mermetus vis....
- generalis....
- in civitate S....
- die decima....
- anno domini....
- octuagesimo sep....
- Petremandi Bertr....
- dictorum Scind....
- et egregii....
- dictorum Animal.
- ordinationem....
- acceptandum....
- facit die et....
-
-(pro visitatione III flor)
-
-_locus sigilli._
-
-Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.
-
-Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor--20 decembre 1587.
-
-Published by Léon Ménebréa in the appendix to his treatise: _De l'Origine,
-de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-âge contre les
-Animaux_, Chambery, 1846. Cf. _Mémoires de la Société Royale Académique de
-Savoie_, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.
-
- * * * * *
-
-According to M. J. Desnoyers (_Recherches sur la coutume d'exorciser et
-d'excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles à l'agriculture_,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.
-
-The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d'Eynatten, in
-his _Manuale Exorcismorum_, is as follows:--"Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem [+], et per Jesum Christum
-[+] filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum [+] ab utroque
-procedentem, ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis,
-aquis, si Dei providentia adhùc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis
-habitetis, sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis
-nocere poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhùc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.--Amen." _Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae_, 1626, p. 1204.
-
-
-B
-
-II[4]
-
-DE L'EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES
-
-PAR GASPARD BAILLY
-
-Il ne favt pas mépriser les Monitoires, veu que c'est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l'Eglise se sert, qui est l'Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n'épargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s'attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont fréquens,
-pour preuue de cette verité. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu'on a
-excommunié les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeïssans aux commandemens de l'Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonné par la sentence de l'Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur procès. Au Siecle passé, il y auoit telle quantité
-d'Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu'elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent à l'Euesque pour
-les Excommunier, ce qu'ayant esté fait, le Lac fut deliuré de ces
-animaux.
-
-Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantité de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu'elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantoüan, si on n'y eût apporté du secours par
-l'Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblémes, sous
-l'intitulation _nihil reliqui_.
-
- _Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,
- Locustæ vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.
- Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;
- Qualia non Athilæ, Castrave Cersis erant.
- Hæ fænum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;
- Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super._
-
-On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu'il se leua vne si grande quantité
-de Mouches, d'vne Eglise qu'on auoit basti à Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu'elles faisoient, elles empéchoient à ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu'elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paué de l'Eglise.
-
-Nous lisons qu'en l'année 1541, il y eut vne telle quantité de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d'vne nuëé; qu'ayant mangé les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d'vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l'Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.
-
-On dit aussi qu'en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantité de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu'ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d'vne coudée d'auteur, et tellement épaisses qu'en volant
-elles leuoient la veüe de la clarté du Soleil, ces animaux firent un
-dégat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chassés par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.
-
-Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cité de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu'en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantité de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu'ayans mangé tous les fruits, feüiles, et écorces des arbres iusques à
-la racine, elles s'éleuerent comme vne nuëe; et tombées en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu'en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.
-
-Du temps de Lotaire troisième Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, blé, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans esté jettés à la Mer; il s'ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l'Air, que la peste rauageât grande quantité de monde en ce pays là. Voilà
-quantité d'exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur procés
-afin de s'en garantir par le moyen de la malédiction que leur donne
-l'Eglise.
-
-Premièrement, sur la Requeste presentée par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le dégat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportée, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur à ses bestioles pour se présenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et là deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, où
-elles estoient, et les raisons veuës et considerées, d'vne part et d'autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.
-
-_Requeste des Habitans_
-
-Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantité
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-blés, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel dégat aux blés,
-et raisins qu'ils n'y laissent rien, d'où les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommée par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.
-
-Qui les fait recourir à la Bonté, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, à ce
-qu'il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu'il a pleu à Dieu d'enuoyer pour l'entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.
-
-_Plaidoyer des Habitans_
-
-Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont à genouy les larmes à l'oeil,
-recourent à votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aués des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessité de laquelle ils
-sont menacés, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n'épargnent ny
-blé, ny vignes; rauage semblable à celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoyé par Themis à Thebes, qui n'épargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous sçauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aués trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint à s'abandonner à des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, _nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla æequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus_: Témoins les Meres
-dont il est parlé au quatrième des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l'une de l'autre. _Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur._ La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu'elle est pleine
-de langueurs, débilités et foiblesses de coeur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.
-
- _Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,
- At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longè est._
-
-Et Auian Marcellin dit, _Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire_. Ie crois que vous aurés compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l'estat qu'il serait reduit si la faim
-l'accabloit.
-
- _Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,
- Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.
- Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.
- Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;
- Ventus erat, pro ventre locus._
-
-Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d'habits dechirés, et des visages affamés, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitié et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iousë, et en cét estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.
-
-Les Informations et visites qui ont esté faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du dégat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalités requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d'adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de fairé reflection, et à cét effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnées en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnées par nostre Mere Sainte
-l'Eglise, à quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.
-
-_Plaidoyer pour les Insectes_
-
-Messievrs, dépuis que vous m'aués choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalités, qu'on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m'étonnant fort
-de la façon qu'on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du dégat qu'on
-pretend qu'elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on sçait qu'elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer à ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu'elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberté de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.
-
-Qve l'adiovrnement laxé contr'elles est nul comme laxé contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu'on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans priués
-de cette lumiere qui a esté donnée au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tiré de la
-Loi premieree, _ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat_; et voyci les
-mots. _Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret._
-
-La seconde raison est, que l'on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu'vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portée sous le tiltre des instituts _de poen. tem.
-litig._ Mais ces animaux ne sont obligés par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-façon, _non tenentur enim ex contractu_, estans incapables de contracter,
-_neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto_, moins
-_ex delicto, seu quasi_; parce que comme il a esté dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priués de son vsage.
-
-De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal à propos, _Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Je
-laisse à penser quest-ce qu'on pretend de faire ayant adjourné ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuées de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l'adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister _cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quæ
-consequuntur locum habent_.
-
-On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict, et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu'il est vray lors qu'il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, _In administratione suæ
-iurisdictionis_, mais non pas en ce cas, où la partie n'en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est décidé par la glose
-de la Loy 2 _ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent_, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite à propos L'axiaume qui dit _quod directè fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus_. Mais ce que je treuue plus
-estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d'Excommunication, d'Anathema et malediction, et à quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l'Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne châtie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peché, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d'auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu'il faut suiure, et ce qu'il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberté de prendre l'vn et laisser l'autre.
-
-On vovdra peut-estre dire qu'elles ont manqué en ce qu'elles ne se sont
-presentées ayant esté adjurnées, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-à cause de leur desobeïssance: Mais à cela on respond qu'il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n'y a point d'adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-_quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitimè citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo_, etc.
-
-De plus, si on prend garde à la définition de l'Excommunication, on verra
-qu'on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l'Excommunication est dite _extra Ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet
-communione, vel è quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechassés de l'Eglise, n'y ayans jamais esté,
-d'autant qu'elle est pour les hommes qui ont l'ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doüées d'aucune raison, et l'Apostre S. Paul
-_ad Corinth._ 5 dit _quòd de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus_, l'Excommunication
-_afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est_, cap. 1, _de sentent. Excomm. in 6._ C'est pourquoy l'ame de ces
-animaux, n'estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchée par telle
-Sentence, _quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis_.
-
-L'autre raison est, _quòd facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licét consecutiuum sit repugnans statui_ suo cap. _de
-occidendis_ 23 q. 5 cap. _sicut dignum extra de homicid_. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-_fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum_. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont esté faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d'en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Cicéron dit
-au premier des Offices _principio generi omnium animantium est à natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant_. Par ces raison on voit qu'ils n'ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, _cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quòd secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minùs erit licitum homini_, veu qu'on lit dans l'Epistre de S. Iude, _cum
-altercaretur Michaël cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere_ Cap. _Si igitur Michaël_, 23. _q._ 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. _q._ 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s'est peché de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considérans en eux mesmes, _est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum_.
-
-Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous féra
-donner les mains, et persuadera à vostre Esprit, qu'on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d'Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononçant telle Sentence s'est s'en pendre à Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs péchés, _immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant_, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge _omnis Caro corrupit viam suam_. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissée, exilée, et
-reduite en tel estat qu'elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.
-
- _Protinus irrupit venæ prioris in æuum,
- Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verùmque fidésque,
- In quorum subiere locum, fraudésque, dolùsque.
- Insidiæque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,
- Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,
- Non socer à genero, fratrum quoquè gratia rara est,
- Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti
- Liuida terribiles miscent aconitæ nouercæ
- Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,
- Uita iacet pietas, et virgo cæde madentes.
- Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit._
-
-Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Procès, à quoy on
-conclud.
-
-_Replique des Habitans_
-
-Le principal motif qu'on a rapporté pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu'estans priués de l'vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis à aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre _cum mulier_ 1. 5. q. l. la _l. congruit
-in fin_. et la Loix suiuante. _ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis._ Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se présente maintenant à juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d'vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d'empescher
-qu'ils n'en commettent par cy-après, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-à vn crime commis, et permis afin d'empescher _ne crimen committatur_.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy _congruit_ sus cité, où il est dit qu'on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insensé du crime qu'il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu'il ne scait ce qu'il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu'il n'offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cét Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l'authorité du Chapitre _omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss._ ou il est dit qu'on peut
-deceller ce qu'on a pris si on ne la pas executé, afin d'y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmée par la glose _in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal._ qui dit qui si quelqu'vn s'accuse d'auoir Fiancé une fille,
-par parolles de présent; on pourra deceller ce qui a esté dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu'ayant espousé telle fille, si on nie
-de l'auoir fait, et on refuse d'accomplir le Mariage, _Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur_. Il este loisible de publier ce qu'on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu'on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l'adjournement est valable, d'autant qu'il est fait
-afin qu'ils ne rapportent du dommage d'ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu'ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre à ce
-qu'on a aduancé à sçauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommuniés,
-Anathematisés, maudis ny execrés; à cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donné à l'Eglise, l'ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l'Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, _omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quæ
-mouentur in aquis_, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s'il y a chose où elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c'est à la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; à sçauoir de l'Homme,
-qu'il a fait à son Image et semblance, _faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram_ et luy a donné le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crées _crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus coeli, et omnibus animantibus Coeli_; Aussi Pline en son Liure
-premier de l'Histoire naturelle dit _quod causâ hominis, videtur cuncta
-alia genuisse natura_. Les Jurisconsultes sont d'accord, _quod hominis
-gratia, omnes fructus à natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de vsur. et
-§. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis._ et Ouide descriuant
-l'excellence de l'Homme parle de la sorte,
-
- _Pronaque, cum spectent animalia cæetera terras
- Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri
- Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
-
-et vn autre Poëte,
-
- _Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus
- Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.
- Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,
- Segnem, atque obscænam, passuri strauisset in aluum._
-
-Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l'Homme dit _hominem tantoe excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimodè, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo verò, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quàm in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aër, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturoe suoe, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos videmus,
-hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc Terra, et
-Elementa, huic bruta præesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat cælum, hinc
-salutem bonumque procurant Angelicoe mentes_.
-
-Et se seroit vne chose, si j'ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priué, et que de chétifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, à l'exclusion de l'Homme pour qui ils sont
-destinés de Dieu. C'est sur ce sujet qu'il dit _Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodò posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea_.
-
-Et pour responce à ce qu'escrit S. Thomas qu'il n'est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu'en l'espece
-qu'on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et détruisans les fruits qui
-seruent à son soutient, et nourriture.
-
-Mais à quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu'on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantité de saints Personnages, ont Excommunié des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d'en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons continuellement, à
-sçauoir dans la ville d'Aix, où S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantité à cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d'Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu'vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arresté, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu'vn est piqué hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu'on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse à part quantité de passages de l'Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donné des maledictions aux choses inanimées, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu'on pourra voir au _Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2._ il maudit le Serpent _Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terræ_.
-
-De dire, qu'excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s'est s'en prendre
-à Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n'est pas s'ens prendre à Dieu que de recourir à l'Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu'il a pleu à sa Diuine Majesté de
-nous enuoyer, à cause de nos fautes et pechés; au contraire c'est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir à elle, lors q'on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.
-
-_Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal_
-
-Les defenses rapportées par l'Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu'on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d'Excommunication à la volée, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si
-agissant, que s'il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cét Aduocat est appuyé sur la règle de
-Droict, qui dit, _qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, poenam non meretur_, et
-vrayement c'est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d'impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines à l'égal des offences, sans auoir égard à personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, _quàm abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viæ ejus_. C'est vne Mer profonde d'ont on ne peut
-découurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoyé ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient à leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.
-
-Ceux qui donnent l'aumosne sont toûjours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit _non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri_, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l'aumône aux pauures, _si non pauisti necasti, pascendò seruare
-poteras_, de mesmes la Loy _de lib. agnoscend._ repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens à ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinée à ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, _qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vità viuet_; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusèbe expliche de la sorte, _fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium_.
-
-C'est vn acte de Charité, que d'assister le pauures, _frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri_, dit Iosuë c. 38. aussi la
-récompense est asseurée, ainsi qu'escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. _venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum à constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis_.
-C'est vne oeuure de Misericorde d'auuoir compassion de son prochain, ainsi
-que dit S. Ambroise _lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiæ, vt
-compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum possumus
-iuvemus, et plus interdum quàm possumus_ l'Hospitalité est recommandée par
-S. Paul _hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim placuerunt quidam,
-Angelis hospitio receptis_, et S. Augustin _disce Christiane sine
-discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne fortè cui domum clauseris, cui
-humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus_. L'ordinaire recompence qui suit
-l'aumosne est le centuple, _honora Dominum de tua substantia, et de
-primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et implebuntur horrea
-tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt_. Les abismes de la
-Diuinité ne s'épuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage Salomon, _fæneratur
-Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam reddet_. S. Paul aux
-Corinthièns Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, _qui administrat semen seminanti,
-et panem ad manducandum præstabit, et multiplicabit semen suum_.
-
-Seroit-ce point à cause des irreuerences qu'on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun égard à la presence de Dieu, _conduntur
-stupra, tractantur lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentiùs deniquè;
-in ædituorum cellulis quòd in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur_, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c'est là bien souuent où se
-donne le mot, où se prennent les assignations, où se lancent les
-meschantes oeilliades, _Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius_,
-dit S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en Ægypte,
-le péché était consacré à Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu'on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peché ressemble au coeur, et
-la feuille à la langue, inférant de là que ceux qui allaient aux Temples,
-deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.
-
-Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu'on assistât au culte Diuin par maniere
-d'aquit: Mais qu'en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entièrement sa
-pensée, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d'actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu'on entendit parmy les
-Ruës aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l'on se tue,
-laissant toute autre oeuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.
-
-Que si les Payens ont esté si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinités, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.
-
-Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n'y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s'il enuoit quelques aduersités aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouët: C'est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent détourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et pechés.
-
-Nous voyons ces habitans la larme à l'oeil, qui demandent pardon d'vn
-coeur contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le
-passé, et employent l'assistance de l'Eglise pour les soulager en leurs
-nécessités, et détourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans
-menacés d'vne famine insuportable si vous ne prenés leur droit, et cause
-en protection, et faire déloger ces animaux, qui les menaçent d'vne ruine
-totale, à quoy nous n'empeschons.
-
-Concluans à cét effect, qu'il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d'execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d'ores en auant ils n'apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, à ce conuenables et accoustumées.
-
-_La Sentence du Iuge d'Eglise_
-
-In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci à certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, à territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visâ certâ informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.
-
-Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordiâ, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.
-
-In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub poenis
-Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infrà sex dies, à Monitione in
-vim sententiae huius, à vineis, et territoriis huius loci discedant,
-nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod si infrà
-praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districtè praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradûs, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt faciliùs ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenùs bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulò abstineant.
-
-
-C
-
-Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.
-
-KLAG
-
-Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmäuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schädliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schädliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben könnten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wüssten zu
-ernehren.
-
-ANTWORT
-
-Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-männiglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewöhr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei----: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewöhr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen müssten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten mögen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-wäre, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fürbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen möge.
-
-URTEL
-
-Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was für Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schädlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmäuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmäder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger wär, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen möchte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen mögen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte_. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.
-
-
-D
-
-Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.
-
-Du vnvernünfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernüfftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ sömlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshäch/ so hat mir mein gnädiger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erlösers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. nächsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gärten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Bäumen/ Krüteren/ vnd von allen örteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd stätteuch fügend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen mögen an den früchten vnd nahrungen der Menschen vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfüllen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fürsprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnädigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnädiger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fürer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verflüchen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebürt/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begären von ewerem jeglichen zu
-bätten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerüffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.
-
-Job. Heinrich Hottinger: _Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti_ iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling's _Chronica_, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.
-
-
-E
-
-Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.
-
-Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfürst.--Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-würdige, Unser lieber andächtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner nächst getanen Predigt, über die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhörlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und ärgerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und männiglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.
-
-Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhörer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevögel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,--dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden möge nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil--ist demnach unser gnädiges Begehren--zu eröffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behändigkeit und Wege, du für gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-tägliche und unaufhörliche Unkeuschheit unzählich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-ärgerliche Vöglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkümmert werden möge.... Das gereicht zur Beförderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnädige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.--Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch, etc._, 1845, pp. 227-8.
-
-
-F
-
-Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.[5]
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Sources of Information | Dates | Animals | Places
- ----------------------------+-------+-------------+---------------------
- Annales Ecclesiastici | 824 |Moles |Valley of Aosta
- Francorum | | |
- | | |
- Muratori: Rer. Ital. | 886 |Locusts |Roman Campagna
- Scriptores, iii | | |
- | | |
- Gaspard Bailly: | 9th |Serpents |Aix-les-Bains
- Traité des Monitoires | cent. | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, | 1120 |Field-mice |Laon
- p. 97, Mémoires de la | |and |
- Société Royale des | |Caterpillars |
- Antiquaires de France, | | |
- viii, p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 1121 |Flies |Foigny near Laon
- Monitoriis in Opusc. | | |
- missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 415. Note, Vita S. | | |
- Bernhardi, i, No. 58. | 1121 |Horseflies |Mayence
- Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272| | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1225 |Eels |Lausanne
- | | |
- L'Abbé Leboeuf: Hist. de | 1266 |Pig |Fontenay-aux-Roses
- Paris, ix, p. 400. | | | near Paris
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres | 1314 |Bull |Moiey-le-Temple
- Thémis, viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1320 |Cockchafers |Avignon
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1322 | |Not Specified
- _vide_ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1323 | |Abbeville
- Both cited by Von Amira, | | |
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | 1338 | |Kaltern
- Kulturgeschichte, ii, p. | | |
- 544; also Germania, iv, | | |
- p. 383. Von Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Delisle: Etudes sur la | 1356 |Pig |Caen
- condition de la classe | | |
- agricole, p. 107. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange. | 1378 | |Abbeville
- _Vide_ homicida. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1379 |Three sows |Saint-Marcel
- Savantes, Dec. 1866, pp. | |and a pig. | les-Jussey
- 476, _sqq._ From the | |Rest of the |
- archives of Côte-d'Or | |two herds |
- | | pardoned |
- | | |
- Charange: Dict. des Titres | 1386 |Sow |Falaise
- Originaux, ii, p. 72. | | |
- _Also_ statistique de | | |
- Falaise, i, p. 63. | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1389 |Horse |Dijon
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1394 |Pig |Mortaing
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 427. From MSS. in la | | |
- Bibliothèque du Roi | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 14th |Spanish flies|Mayence
- Tract. ii, Mémoires, | cent. | |
- cit., viii, p. 411 | | |
- | | |
- MS. of Judge Hérisson, | 1403 |Sow |Meulan
- published by Lejeune in | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 433; _also_ Loriol: | | |
- La France Eure et Loire, | | |
- p. 108 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1404 |Pig |Rouvre
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1405 |Ox |Gisors
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliothèque du Roi | 1408 |Pig |Pont-de-l'Arche
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- Louandre: Histoire | 1414 | " |Abbeville
- d'Abbeville | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1418 | " | "
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1419 | " |Labergement-le-Duc
- Côte-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1420 | " |Brochon
- | | |
- " " " | 1435 | " |Trochères
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 1451 |Rats and |Berne
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | Bloodsuckers|
- p. 423 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Sociétés | 1452 |Sixteen cows |Rouvre
- Savantes, iv, p. 476 | | and one goat|
- _sqq._ Dec. 1866 | | |
- | | |
- Gui-Pape: Decisiones | 1456 |Pig |Bourgogne
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, pp. | 1457 |Sow |Savigny-sur-Etang,
- 441-445. From Archives of | | | Bourgogne
- Monjeu and Dependencies | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches etc. | 1460-1|Weevils |Dijon
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Justice et | 1463 |Two pigs |Amiens
- Bourreau à Amiens | | |
- | | |
- Sauval: Histoire de Paris, | 1466 |Sow |Corbeil
- iii, p. 387. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris| 1470 |Mare |Amiens
- | | |
- Promenades pittoresques dans| 1474 |Cock |Bâle
- l'Evêché de Bâle. Journal | | |
- du Départment du Nord, | | |
- Nov. 1, 1813. Mémoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428. Johann| | |
- Gross: Kleine Baseler | | |
- Chronik. | | |
- | | |
- Schilling: Chronica (Zurich | 1478 |Inger (sort |Berne
- MS.), Hottinger: Hist. | | of weevil) |
- Eccles. Pars iv, pp. | | |
- 317-321 | | |
- | | |
- Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du |1479[6]|Inger | "
- Pays de Vaud | | |
- | | |
- Hist. de Nismes. Mémoires, | 1479 |Rats and |Nîmes
- cit., viii, p. 428. | | Moles |
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1479 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia von | 1481 |Caterpillars |Macon
- Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Victor Hugo: Nôtre Dame de | 1482 |Goat |Paris
- Paris | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | 1487 |Snails |Macon
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 416 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 | " |Autun
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 |Weevils |Beaujeu
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1490 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812, | 1494 |Pig |Clermont-les-Moncornet
- p. 88. Mémoires, cit., | | | near Laon
- viii, p. 428, 446 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la | 1497 |Sow |Charonne
- Penalité, sub verb. | | |
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Voyage Littéraire de deux | 1499 |Bull |Beauvais
- Bénédictins (Durand et | | |
- Martenne), 1717, ii, | | |
- p. 166-7 | | |
- | | |
- Archives de l'Abbaye de | 1499 |Pig |Sèves near Chartres
- Josaphat. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 434-5 | | |
- | | |
- Mémoires, cit., viii, p. | 15th |Sow |Dunois
- 434 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | " |Caterpillars |Coire
- | | |
- " " " | " |Worms |Constance
- | | |
- " " " | " |Beetles |Coire
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Épopée des | 1500 |Flies |Mayence
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500 |Snails |Lyon
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500- |Vermin |Autun
- | 1530 | (Rats, etc.)|
- | | |
- Mémoires et Documents, publ.| 1509 |Vermin |Lausanne
- par la Soc. de la Suisse | | |
- Romande, vii, No. 97, pp. | | |
- 675-677 | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or | 1510 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or. | 1512 | " |Arcenaux
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 447 | | |
- | | |
- Mathieu: Hist. des Évêques |1512-13|Rats and |Langres
- de Langres, p. 188 | | Insects |
- | | |
- Groslée: Ephémérides, 1811, | 1516 |Weevils |Troyes in Champagne
- ii, p. 153, 168. _Cf._ |(1506 | |
- Théophile Raynaud: Opusc, | according |
- 1665, p. 482. Mémoires, | to some |
- cit., viii, p. 413, 418, | authorities) |
- 424 | | |
- | | |
- Habasque: Not. hist. sur le | 1516 |Locusts |Tréguier
- Litoral des Côtes-du-Nord,| | |
- p. 89 | | |
- | | |
- Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, | 1519 |Field-mice |Glurns (Stelvio)
- pp. 946-48 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la |1522[7]|Rats |Autun
- Penalité. _Cf._ Chasseneus| | |
- | | |
- Vernet in Thémis ou | 1525 |Dog |Parliament of
- Bibliothèque des | | | Toulouse
- Jurisconsulte, viii | | |
- | | |
- Papon and Boesius: | 1528 |Not specified|Parliament of
- Decisiones. _Cf._ Thémis, | | | Bordeaux
- viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1528 | " | " "
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1536 |Weevils |Lutry (on Lake
- contre les Animaux, p. | | | Leman)
- 505. From Grenier: | | |
- Documents relatifs à | | |
- l'hist. du pays de Vaud. | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1540 |Bitch |Meaux
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Côte-d'Or | 1540 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1541 |She-Ass |Loudun
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Bailly: Traité des | 1541 |Grasshoppers |Lombardy
- Monitoires, ii | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1541 |Vermin |Lausanne
- | |(worms, rats,|
- | |bloodsuckers)|
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1543 |Snails and |Grenoble
- Thémis, i, p. 196 | | Locusts |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1545 |Weevils |St. Jean de
- contre les Animaux, pp. | and | | Maurienne
- 544, 545, 556. De Actis | 1546 | |
- Scindicorum com. St. | | |
- Jul., etc. | | |
- | | |
- Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, | 1546 |Cow |Parliament of
- iii, p. 28, Registres | | | Paris
- manuscrits de la | | |
- Tournelle. _Cf._ Mémoires,| | |
- cit., viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1550 | " | " "
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1551 |Goat |Ile de Rhé
- | | |
- " " " | 1554 |Sheep (ewe) |Beaugé
- | | |
- Aldrovande: De Insectis, | 1554 |Bloodsuckers |Lausanne
- 1602, lib. vii, 724. | | |
- Mémoires, cit. viii, | | |
- p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyer, cited in Revue des| 1554 |Insects |Langres
- questions historiques, v, | | |
- p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567| | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1556 |She-Ass |Sens
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de | 1557 |Pig |Saint-Quintin
- Saint-Quintin, p. 143. | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | | |
- animaux, etc., p. 9 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1560 |She-Ass |Loigny near
- manuscrit | | | Châteaudun
- | | |
- " " " | 1561 |Cow |Augoudessus in
- | | | Picardy
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del | 1562 |Weevils |Argenteuil
- Vino. Regist. Epir. Par. | | |
- for May 8 | | |
- | | |
- Ranchin on Gui. Pape | 1565 |Mule |Montpellier
- Quaest., 74. Thémis, i, | | |
- p. 196. Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1565 |Not specified|Parliament of
- viii | | | Toulouse
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopée des | 1566 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- Animaux | | | Paris
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1567 |Sow |Senlis
- Nationale of Paris | | |
- | | |
- Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, | 1572 |Pig |Moyen-Montier,
- 1811, ii, p. 374 | | | near Nancy
- | | |
- Lersner: Chronica, 1706, | 1574 | " |Frankfort-on-the-Main
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones Thémis, | 1575 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- viii | | | Paris
- | | |
- Haus-Chronik von | 1576 |Pig |Schweinfurt
- Schweinfurt, in | | |
- Zeitschrift für deutsche | | |
- Kulturgeschichte, i, 156 | | |
- | | |
- Cannaert: Bydragen tot de | 1578 |Pig(?) |Ghent
- Kennis van het oude | | |
- strafrecht in Vlandern, | | |
- 1835, p. vii | | |
- | | |
- Derheims: Hist. de | 1585 |Pig |Saint-Omer
- Saint-Omer, p. 327 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist. du Dauphiné. | " |Locusts |Valence
- _Cf._ Thémis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements rendus | 1587 |Weevils |St. Jean-de-Maurienne
- contre les animaux, etc., | | |
- pp. 546, 549 | | |
- | | |
- Fornery and Laincel | 1596 |Dolphins |Marseilles
- | | |
- Théophile Raynaud: De | 16th |Weevils and |Cotentin
- Monitoriis, p. 482. | cent. | Grasshoppers|
- Mémoires, cit., viii, |(first | |
- p. 429 | half) | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | " |Snails |Lyons
- Mémoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 415 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Weevils |Mâcon
- | | |
- " " " | " |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Épopée des | " |Dog |Scotland
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Duboys: Hist. du Droit | 16th |Weevils |Angers
- Crim. de la France | cent. | |
- | second| |
- | half | |
- | | |
- Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor | " |Rats |Spain
- Navarrus: Consilia seu | | |
- Responsa, 1602, ii, p. | | |
- 812. Mémoires, cit., viii,| | |
- p. 419. Théoph. Raynaud, | | |
- cit., p. 482 | | |
- | | |
- Francesco Vivio: Decisiones,| 16th |Divers |Aquila in Italy
- No. 68. Cited by | cent. | animals |
- D'Addosio: Bestie Delinq.,| second| |
- p. 125 | half | |
- | | |
- Archives of Obwalden | " |Gadflies |Aargau
- | | |
- Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. | " |Locusts |Naples
- _Cf._ D'Addosio, cit., | | |
- p. 115. | | |
- | | |
- Sardagna: L'uomo e le | " |Horse |Portugal
- Bestie. Cited by D'Addosio| | |
- | | |
- Mornacius to Du Cange, | 1600 | |Beauvais
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Cow |Thouars
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Abbeville
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, | " |Weevils |Vercelli
- 1890, p. 141 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, | 1601 |Dog |Brie
- viii. Lerouge: Reg. | | |
- secret manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Provins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Recueil d'Arrets | 1601 |Not |Parliament of
- | | specified | Paris
- | | |
- Charma: Leçons de | 1604 |Ass |Parliament of
- Philosophie | | | Paris
- | | |
- Guerra: Diurnali | " | " |Naples
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Joinville
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1606 |Sheep |Riom
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |Châteaurenaud
- | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Mare |Coiffy near Langres
- | | |
- | | |
- Lejeune: Mémoires, cit., | " |Bitch |Chartres
- viii, p. 418 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1607 |Mare |Boursant near
- manuscrit | | | d'Epernay
- | | |
- " " " | 1609 | " |Montmorency
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Niederrad
- | | |
- Voltaire: Siècle de Louis | " |Cow |Parliament of
- XIV, ch. i. Louandre: | | | Paris
- Rev. des deux Mondes, | | |
- 1854, i, p. 334 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1610 |Horse |Paris
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1611 |Goat |Laval
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |St. Fergeux
- | | | near Rethel
- | | |
- " " " | 1613 |Sow |Montoiron near
- | | | Chatelleraut
- | | |
- " " " | 1614 |She-Ass |Le Mans
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, etc.,| 1616 |Rats and |Langres
- p. 13 | | insects |
- | | |
- Anzeige für Kunde der | 1621 |Cow |Machern near
- deutschen Vorzeit, 1880, | | | Leipsic
- col. 102 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1621 |Mare |La Rochelle
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1622 | " |Montpensier
- | | |
- " " " | 1623 |She-Ass |Bessay near Moulins
- | | |
- " " " | 1624 |Mule |Chefboutonne (Poitou)
- | | |
- Döpler: Theat. pen., ii, | 1631 |Mares and |Greifenberg
- p. 574 | | Cows |
- | | |
- Marchisio Michele: Gatte | 1633 |Weevils |Strambino
- ed. insetti nocivi, 1834, | | | (Ivrea)
- p. 63 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Bellac
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1641 |Pig |Viroflay
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1647 |Mare |Parliament of
- manuscrit | | | Paris
- | | |
- " " " | 1650 | " |Fresnay near Chartres
- | | |
- Crollolanza: Storia del | 1659 |Caterpillars |Chiavenna
- Contado di Chiavenna, | | |
- p. 455 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gazzetta | 1661 |Weevils |Turin
- Litteraria di Torino, | | |
- Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Cotton Mather: Magnalia | 1662 |Cow, two |New Haven, Conn.
- Christi Americana, Book | | Heifers, |
- vi. London, 1702 | | three Sheep,|
- | | and two Sows|
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1666 |Mare |Tours
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |St. P. Lemontiers
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1667 |She-Ass |Vaudes near
- manuscrit | | | Bar-sur-Seine
- | | |
- " " " | 1668 |Mare |Angers
- | | |
- Annales scientifiques de | 1670 |Locusts |Clermont
- l'Auvergne, Vol. vii, | | |
- p. 391 | | |
- | | |
- Döpler: Theatrum pen., ii, | 1676 |Mare and Cow |Silesia
- p. 5 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1678 | " |Beaugé
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di | " |Weevils |Turin
- Torius, Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones, i, | 1679 |Mare |Parliament
- p. 914. Mémoires, cit., | | | d'Aix
- viii, p. 431. Boniface: | | |
- Traité des matières | | |
- criminelles, 1785, p. 31 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist du Dauphiné. | Before|Worms |Constance
- Thémis, viii | 1680 | | and Coire
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1680 |Mare |Fourches near
- manuscrit | | | Provins
- | | |
- Heinrich Roch: Schlesische | 1681 |Mare |Wünschelburg
- Chronik, p. 342. Döpler: | | | in Silesia
- Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 | | |
- _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1684 |Mare |Ottendorf
- | | |
- " " " | 1685 | " |Striga
- | | |
- Dulaure: Description des | 1690 |Locusts |Pont-de-Château
- principaux lieux de la | | | in Auvergne
- France, 1789, v, p. 493 | | |
- _sqq._ Mémoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 412 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1692 |Mare |Moulins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi,| End of|Turtledoves |Canada
- p. 79. Mémoires, cit., | 17th | |
- viii, p. 431 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Meiners: Vergleichung des | " |He-Goat |Russia
- ältern u, neuern | | banished |
- Russlands, p. 291. | | to Siberia |
- _Cf._ Amira, p. 573 | | |
- | | |
- Registres de la Paroise de | 1710 |Rats |Grignon
- Grignon | | |
- | | |
- Sorel: Procès contre des | 1710 |Vermin |Autun
- animaux, etc., p. 23 | | |
- | | |
- Rinds Herreds Krönike and | 1711 | " |Als in Jutland
- other sources given by | | |
- Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Agnel: Curiosités | 1713 |Termites |Piedade no Maranhão
- judiciaires et | | | in Brazil
- historiques du moyen-âge, | | |
- p. 46. _Cf._ Manoel | | |
- Bernardes: Nova Floresta | | |
- ou Sylva de varios | | |
- apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom. | | |
- Lisboá, 1706-47 | | |
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliothèque | 1726 |Not specified|Paris
- Nationale of Paris, | | |
- No. 10,970. D'Addosio: | | |
- Best. Del., p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ménebréa: Jugements contre | 1731 |Insects |Thonon
- les animaux, p. 508 | | |
- | | |
- La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 | 1733 |Vermin |Buranton
- _sqq._ Amira, p. 564 | | |
- | | |
- Rousseaud de Lacombe: | 1741 |Cow |Poitou
- Traité des matières crim. | | |
- D'Addosio: Best. Del., | | |
- p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ant. de Saint-Gervais: | 1750 |She-Ass |Vanvres
- Hist. des Animaux | | |
- | | |
- A Report of the Case of | 1771 |Dog |Chichester, England
- Farmer Carter's Dog. | | |
- Amira, p. 559 | | |
- | | |
- Comparon: Hist. du | 1793 | " |Paris
- Tribunal Révolutionnaire | | |
- de Paris. _Cf._ Sorel, | | |
- op. cit., p. 16 | | |
- | | |
- Filangieri: Scienza della | 18th |Dogs |Italy
- Legislazione | cent. | |
- | | |
- Det. Kong. Danske | | |
- Landhusholdnings-Selskabs | 1805-6|Vermin |Lyö in Denmark
- Skrifter. Ny Saml. ii, 1, | | |
- 22. Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, | 1826 |Locusts |Clermont-Ferrand
- etc., p. 15 | | |
- | | |
- Gazette des Tribunaux, | 1845 |Dog |Paris
- Jan. 23, 1845 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1864 |Pig |Pleternica in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Krauss, quoted by Amira, | 1866 |Locusts |Pozega in
- p. 573 | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- " " " | " |Grasshoppers |Vidovici in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Desnoyer: Recherches, | 19th |Locusts |Catalonia
- etc., p. 15 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Allg. deutsche | | |
- Strafrechts-zeitung, | " |Cock |Leeds in England
- 1861, No. 2. Also Pertile:| | |
- Gli animali in giudizio | | |
- | | |
- Cretella: Gli Animali | " |Wolf |Calabria
- sotto processo in Fanfulla| | |
- 1891, No. 65. _Cf._ Amira,| | |
- p. 569 | | |
- | | |
- New York Herald and Echo | 1906 |Dog |Délémont in
- de Paris, May 4, 1906[8] | | | Switzerland
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-G
-
-Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.
-
- Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passée devant Guiot de
- Montfort, tabellion à Falaise, et donnée par le bourreau de cette
- ville de la somme de _dix sols et dix deniers tournois_ pour sa peine
- et salaire d'avoir trainé, puis pendu à la justice de Falaise une
- truie de l'age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mangé le visage de
- l'enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui était au bers et avoit trois mois et
- environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de _dix sols
- tournois pour un gant neuf_ quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
- cette quittance est donné á Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
- bourreau y declare qu'il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
- et qu'il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.
-
-Charange: _Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux_. Paris, 1764. Tome II. p.
-72. Also _Statistique de Falaise_, 1827. Tome I. p. 63.
-
-
-H
-
-Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
- scel des obligacions de la vicomté de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
- que par devant Bynet de l'Espiney, clerc tabellion juré ou siege dudit
- lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,[9] en la
- viconté d'Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
- homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
- Mortaing, c'est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
- paine et salaire d'estre venue d'Avrenches jusques à Mortaing, pour
- faire acomplir et pendre à la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
- lequel avait tué et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
- ladite viconté de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
- à estre trayné et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de _Co
- ... rin_, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
- dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paié, et en quita le roy nostre
- sire, ledit viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
- sellé ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C'en fut fait
- l'an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII{e}
- jour de septembre. Signé J. LOURS. (Countersigned) BINET.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_
-Mémoires, _ibid._ pp. 439-40.]
-
-
-I
-
-Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King's proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.
-
- A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant à
- Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
- chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
- Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
- justice d'une truye qui avait devoré un petit enffant, a convenu faire
- necessairement les frais, commissions et dépens ci-après déclarés,
- c'est à savoir: Pour dépense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, au maître des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris à Meullant faire
- ladite exécution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
- maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, pour la voiture qui la mena à la justice, six sols parisis.
-
- Item, pour cordes à la lier et hâler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.
-
- Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.
-
- Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
- parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions être vray par
- ces présentes scellées de notre scel, et à greigneur confirmation et
- approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la châtellenie dudit
- lieu de Meullant, le XV{e} de mars l'an 1403. Signé de Baudemont, avec
- paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la châtellenie de Meullant.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Hérisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the _Mémoires de la Société Royale
-des Antiquaires de France_. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]
-
-
-J
-
-Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.
-
- Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion juré pour le roy nostre sire en la
- viconté du Pont de Larche, fut présent Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
- prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
- avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
- homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
- somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c'est
- assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouvé (livré) le pain
- du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
- (Here the names of these prisoners are given.) _Item_ à ung porc
- admené es dictes prisons, le 21{e} jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
- au 17{e} jour de juillet après en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
- pendu par les gares à un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, à quoy
- il avoit esté condempné pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
- et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13{e}
- jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
- tué ung pettit enfant, auquel temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
- pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
- trouvé et baillé la corde qu'il esconvint à lier icelui porc qu'il
- reschapast de ladite prison où il avait esté mis, x deniers tournois.
- Du 16 Octobre 1408.
-
-[Derived from manuscripts of the _Bibliothèque du Roi_. _Vide_ Mémoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]
-
-
-K
-
-Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.
-
- Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
- terres au conté de Bourgoingue, salut.
-
- Oye la supplication de frère Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
- prieurté de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
- le V{e} jour de ce présent mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
- Muet, dit _le Hochebet_, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
- pors des habitans d'icelle ville ou finaige d'icelle, et au cry de
- l'un d'iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
- sus audit Perrenot, l'ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
- comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu'il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
- suppliant, et par le père dudit Perrenot a esté trouvé blessier à mort
- par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confessè en la
- présence de son dit père e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost après il
- soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
- justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
- arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
- manière qu'il appartient, et encore les détient prissonniers tant
- ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
- que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
- truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessié. Et ledit prieur nous
- ait supplié que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
- trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivré. Nous
- inclinans à sa requeste, avons de gràce especiale ouctroyé et
- consenty, et par ces présentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
- justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l'ung des pourceaulx
- dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis à delivre,
- nonobstant qu'ils aient esté à la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
- mandons que de notre presente grâce vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
- user ledit prieur et autres qu'il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
- grâce.
-
- Donné à Montbar, le XII{e} jour de septembre de l'an de grâce mil CCC
- LXX IX. Ainsi signé. Par monseigneur le duc: _J. Potier_.
-
-[Published by M. Garnier in the _Revue des Sociétés Savantes_, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 _sqq._, from the archives of Côte-d'Or and reprinted by D'Addosio
-in _Bestie Delinquenti_, pp. 277-8.]
-
-
-L
-
-Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk's office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.
-
- Entre le procureur de messieurs[10] demandeur et accusateur au
- principal et requérant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
- du quart d'abondant, d'une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accusé,
- deffendeur et défaillant, d'autre part.
-
- Veu le procès criminel, charges et informations, décret de prise de
- corps, adjournement à troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
- dict quart d'habondant, le recollement des dicts témoings et
- _recognaissance faicte par les dicts témoings de la chienne dont est
- question_, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
- conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d'habondant
- ont esté bien donnés pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accusé,
- attainct et convaincu .........
-
- Pour réparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
- estre pendu et estranglé à une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
- dressée aux lices du Marché aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
- lieu et endroict où les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
- auparavant ladicte exécution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
- assommée par l'exécuteur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
- les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brûlés et
- mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehendé en sa
- personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
- exécuté par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attaché à ladicte
- potence, et déclarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisqués
- à qui il appartiendra, sur cieux préalablement pris la somme de cent
- cinquante livres d'amende que nous avons adjugées auxdicts sieurs, sur
- laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononcé et exécuté
- par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
- Signé _Guyot_.
-
-[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Hérisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France. _Vide_ Mémoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]
-
-
-M
-
-Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, près des foussés du Chastelet de dit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, et ce le 10{e} jour du moys de janvier 1457, présens
- maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
- Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, André Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
- Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins à ce
- appellés et requis, l'an et jour dessus dit.
-
- Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
- dame dudit Savigny, demandeur à l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
- Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d'office dudit lieu de
- Savigny, demandeur à l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
- Savigny _deffendeur_, à l'encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
- honorable homme et saige M{r}. Benoit Milot d'Ostun, licencié en loys
- et bachelier en décret, conseïllier de monseigneur le duc de
- Bourgoingne, a été dit et proposé que le mardi avant Noel dernier
- passé, _une truye_, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
- présentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu'ils été prins en
- flagrant délit, ont commis et perpetré mesmement ladicte truye murtre
- et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
- de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
- Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
- causes d'office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit défendeur
- répondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit à
- souffisance, et lequel par nous a esté sommé et requis ce il vouloit
- avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
- ledit cas luy a esté faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
- première, deuxiéme et tierce fois, que s'il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
- justice ne s'en deust faire l'on estoit tout prest de les oïr en tout
- ce qu'il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et exécution de justice
- que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
- dit et respondu qui'l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
- ait esté procédé en la manière qui s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que pour
- la partie dudit demandeur, avons esté requis instamment de dire droit
- en ceste cause, en la présence dudit défendeur présent et non
- contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons à tous que
- nous avons procédé et donné nostre sentence deffinitive en la manière
- que s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
- esté proposé pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert à
- souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuëment hue. _Aussi
- conseil avec saiges et practiciens_, et aussi considéré en ce cas
- l'usance et coustume du païs de Bourgoingne, aïant Dieu devant nos
- yeulx, nous disons et pronunçons par notre dite sentence, déclairons
- la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquée à la justice de
- Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise à justice et au dernier supplice,
- et estre pendus par les pieds derriers à ung arbre esproné en la
- justice de Madame de Savigny, considéré que la justice de madite dame
- n'est mie présentement elevée, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
- arbre esproné, et ansi le disons et prononçons par notre dicte
- sentence et à droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
- qui n'appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangiés dudit Jehan
- Martin, combien que aient estés trovés ensanglantés, l'on remet _la
- cause d'iceulx coichons_ aux tres jours, et avec ce l'on est content
- de les rendre et bailler audit _Jehan Bailly_, en baillant caucion de
- les rendre s'il est trové qu'il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
- païant les poutures, et fait l'on savoir à tous, sous peine de
- l'amende et de 100 sols tournois qu'ils le dieut et déclairent dedans
- les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, après la
- prononciation d'icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
- promoteur des causes d'office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
- advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demandé
- acte de nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyé, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
- notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
- la présence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommés, je lui ai ouctroyé, ce
- fait l'an et jour dessus dit et présens les dessus tesmoings. _Ita
- est._ Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est écrit:
-
- _Item_, en oultre, nous juge dessus nommé, savoir faisons que
- incontinent après nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnée par nous les an
- et jour, et en la présence des temoings que dessus, avons sommé et
- requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et
- se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recréance d'iceulx; lequel a
- dit et répondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
- en iceulx coichons; et qui s'en rapportoit à ce que en ferions;
- pourquoy sont demeurez à la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
- de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
- causes d'offices, nous en a demandé acte de court, lequel lui nous
- avons ouctroyé et ouctroyons par ces présentes, et avec ce ledict
- procureur de ladicte dame, à moy notaire subescript, m'en demanda
- instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroyé en la presénce desdits
- tesmoings cy-dessus nommés.
-
- _Item_, en après, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
- faisons à tous que incontinent après les chouses dessus dictes, avons
- faict delivrer réalement et de fait ladicte truye à maistre Etienne
- Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant à Châlons-sur-Saône,
- pour icelle mettre à exécucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
- dicte sentence, laquelle délivrance d'icelle trühie faicte par nous
- comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mené sur une
- chairette ladicte truye à ung chaigne esproné, estant en la justice de
- ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esproné, icelluy maistre
- Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant à
- exécution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
- laquelle délivrance et exécution d'icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
- Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demandé acte de
- nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte et donnée, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyée, et avec ce à moi, notaire subscript, m'a demandé instrument
- ledit procureur à luy estre donnée, je luy ai ouctroyé en la présence
- des temoings cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
- Ainsi signé Mongachot, avec paraphe.
-
-Nearly a month later, on "the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin" (which occurred on Feb. 2.), "the six little
-porklets or sucklings" were brought to trial. The following is the _procès
-verbal_.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussée de l'Estang dudit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
- Savigny, et ce le vendredy après la feste de la Purification Notre
- Dame Vierge, présens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
- Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.
-
- Veue les sommacions et réquisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
- damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, à Jehan Bailly
- alias Valot de advohé on repudié les coichons de la truye nouvellement
- mise à exécution par justice à raison du murtre commis et perpetré par
- la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
- esté remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
- d'iceulx coichons rendre, s'il estoit trouvé qu'ils feussions
- culpables du délict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
- les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
- instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
- déclairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et à droit:
- iceulx coichons compéter et appartenir comme biens vaccans à ladite
- dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l'usence et la
- coustume de païs le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte sentence, ledit
- procureur de ladite dame en a demandé acte, de nostre dicte court a
- luy estre donnée et ouctroyée. Avec ce en a demandé instrument à moy
- notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroyé en la présence des dessus
- nommés. Signé Mongachot avec paraphe.
-
-[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boëte 25{e}, liasse 1,
-2, & 3, etc.) _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]
-
-
-N
-
-Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.
-
- _Le lundi 18 avril 1499._
-
- Veu le procès criminel faict par-devant nous à la requeste du
- procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbé et convent de Iosaphat, à
- l'encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers èsprisons de
- céans, pour raison de la mort advenue à la personne d'une jeune
- enfant, nommée Gilon, âgée de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
- enfant avoit eté baillée à nourrice par sa mère: ledict meurtre advenu
- et commis par un pourceau de l'aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
- Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
- et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
- jurisdiction faictes à la requête dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
- sur ce conseil aulx saiges, _ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
- condampnés et condampnons en l'amende envers de justice de dix-huit
- franz_, qu'il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et à tenir
- prison jusqu'à plein payement et satisfaction d'iceulx à tout le moins
- qu'ils avoient baillé bonne et seure caution d'iceulx.
-
- _Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau_, pour les causes contenues
- et établies audict procès, _nous les avons condampné et condampnons à
- être pendu et executé par justice_, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
- seigneurs, par notre sentence définitive, _et à droit_.
-
- Donnè sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
- que susdicts. _Signé_ C. Briseg avec paraphe.
-
-[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. _Vide_ Mémoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]
-
-
-O
-
-Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
- Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l'église et monastère
- de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Prémontré, et les echevins de
- ce même lieu; comme il nous eust été apporté et affirmé par le
- procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbé et convent de
- Saint-Martin de Laon, qu'en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
- appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
- relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust éstranglé et _défacié_ ung jeune
- enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
- cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
- requérant à cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions procéder, comme
- justice at raison le désiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
- savoir et cognoitre la vérité dudit cas, eussion ouï et examiné par
- serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
- Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
- affirmé par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
- dernier passé ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
- Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
- Dizy ..., ayant délaissé en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
- renchargea à une sienne fille, âgée de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
- lequel temps ladite fille s'en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
- laissé ledit enfant couché en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
- ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et défigura et mangea
- le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tôt après ledit enfant, au moyen
- des morsures et dévisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
- siecle trépassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
- dudit cas, et afin d'exemplaire et gardé justice, avons dit, jugé,
- sentencié, prenoncé et appointé, que ledit pourceaulz _estant detenu
- prisonnier_ et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
- hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estranglé, en une fourche de bois, auprès et
- joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
- relligieux, estant auprès de leur cense d'Avin.... En temoing de ce
- nous avons scellé ces presentes de notre scel.
-
- Ce fut fait le quatorzième jour de juing, l'an 1494, et scellé en cire
- rouge; et sur le dos est écrit:
-
- Sentence pour ung pourceaulz executé par justice, admené en la cense
- de Clermont, et étranglé en une fourche les gibez d'Avin.
-
-[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in _L'Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812_, p. 88. _Vide_
-Mémoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]
-
-
-P
-
-Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
- royal et procureur au bailliage et siège présidial de Senlis, bailly
- et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d'Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
- M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
- faisons:
-
- Veu le procès extraordinairement fait à la requête du Procureur de la
- seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue à une
- jeune fille âgée de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyénor Darmeige
- et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
- trouvée avoir esté mangée et devorée en la tete, main senestre et au
- dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
- appartenant à Louis Mahieu, frère de la dite femme et son proche
- voisin;
-
- Le procès verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
- parrain et de sa marraine qui l'ont recogneu;
-
- Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
- dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la visitation faicte de la dicte
- truye à l'instant du dit cas advenu et tout consideré en conseil, il a
- été conclu et advisé par justice que POUR LA CRUAUTÉ ET FEROCITÉ
- COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE, elle sera exterminée par mort et pour ce
- faire sera pendue par l'executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
- estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
- chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses à
- tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
- de ne plus laisser échapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
- seure garde, sous peine d'amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
- s'ily échoit, sauf et sans préjudice à faire droit sur les conclusions
- prinses par le dit Procureur à l'encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
- ainsi que de raison, au témoin de quoy nous avon scellé les présentes
- du scel de la dicte justice.
-
- Ce fu faist le jeudi 27{e} jour de Mars 1557 et exécuté ledit jour par
- l'executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.
-
-[Dom. Grenier, _Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris_, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D'Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]
-
-
-Q
-
-Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupré, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.
-
- A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
- du Bailly du temporel de l'église & abbaye nôtre Dame de Beauprés de
- l'ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables & discretes personnes & mes
- tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbé & convent de
- ladite abbaye, salut. Comme à la requeste du procureur de mesdits
- seigneurs, & par leur justice temporelle qu'ils ont en leur terre &
- seigneurie du Caurroy eût été nagaires prins & mis en la main d'icelle
- leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant à Jean Boullet
- censier & fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &
- cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau étant aux champs & sur le
- territoiiere d'icelle église, auroit par furiosité occis & mis à mort
- un joine fils, nommé Lucas Dupont, de l'âge de quatorze à quinze ans,
- ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis à la garde de
- ces bestes à corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
- thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
- estre faite, & qu'il fut executé jusqu'à mort inclusivement par la
- justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
- & de la detestation d'iceluy. Sur quoy enqueste & information eussent
- été faites de la forme & maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
- procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
- que veu laditte enqueste & information & sur tout en conseil & advis,
- nous par nostre sentence & jugement, avons dies & jugié, que pour
- raison de l'omicide, dont dessus est touchié, fait par ledit thorreau
- en la personne d'iceluy Lucas, & pour la detestation du crime d'iceluy
- homicide, ledit thorreau nommé confisqué à mesdits seigneurs sera
- executé jusques à mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, & pendu à
- une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre & seigneurie dudit
- Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
- le avons condamné & condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
- scel à ces lettres qui furent faites & pronunchiés audit lieu du
- Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
- l'aisné, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes & subjets de mesdits
- seigneurs, Jehan Charles, & Clement le Carpentier, & plusieurs autres
- les seizieme jour de May l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
- Ainsi signé, Ileugles, ad ce commis.
-
-[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupré. Vide _Voyage Littéraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur_. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]
-
-
-R
-
-Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.
-
-After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:
-
- "Venez, famille desolée;
- Venez, pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins;
- Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.
- Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misère;
- Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre père,
- Notre père par qui nous fûmes engendrés,
- Notre père qui nous....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez, tirez, tirez.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Notre père, messieurs....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!
- Ils ont pissé partout.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Ouf! je me sens dejà pris de compassion.
- Ce que c'est qu' à propos toucher la passion!
- Je suis bien empêché. La vérité me presse;
- Le crime est avéré, lui-même il le confesse.
- Mais, s'il est condamné, l'embarras est égal;
- Voilà bien des enfants réduits à l'hôpital."
- _Les Plaideurs_, Act III, sc. 3.
-
-
-S
-
-Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.
-
- Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
- Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,[11] da sie gleich
- hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
- worden. Vber welch vnerhörten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
- Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
- Leipzig sich darüber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
- Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
- abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen öden ort billig geführet,
- daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
- Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
- Schäfferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
- auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.
-
-[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-_Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit_. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]
-
-
-
-
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-TOBLER, G.: Thierprocesse in der Schweiz. Bern, 1893.
-
-TORNING, CHRISTIANUS J.: De Peccatis et Poenis Brutorum. A dissertation on
-graduating at the University of Upsala in Sweden. May 25, 1725.
-
-VAN HAAFTEN: Die Dieren als misdadigers voor den Rechter. Eigen Haard,
-1884.
-
-VAIRO, LEONARDO: De Fascino libri tres, etc. Venet. 1599.
-
-VERNET: Lettre ... sur les Procès faits aux Animaux. Thémis, vol. viii.
-B., pp. 45-61.
-
-VIVIO, FRANCESCO: Decisiones. No. 68. 1610.
-
-DE WINDE: Byzonderheden uit de Geschiedeniss van het strafregt in de
-Nederlanden. Middelburg, 1827.
-
-ZEROLA, THOMAS: Praxis Episcopalis. Sub verbo Superstitio. Venet. 1599.
-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil
- spirits, 76
-
- Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, 180
-
- Addosio, Carlo d', his _Bestie Delinquenti_ cited, 1, 4;
- his list of animal prosecutions, 135;
- on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, 159
-
- Æschines, cited, 172
-
- Æschylus, his _Choephoroi_ cited, 174
-
- Ahuramazda, 57, 61, 82, 176
-
- Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, 153
-
- Altiat, his poem quoted, 93
-
- Amira, Prof. Karl von, his _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ cited, 1-3,
- 137
-
- Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all
- incantations and excommunications, 4, 36;
- citations from the Bible in proof of their power, 25;
- render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake
- Leman, 27;
- turn white bread black to punish heresy, 28;
- fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, 28, 29;
- sold by the Pope, 30;
- hurled against noxious vermin, 37;
- made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, 37;
- differ from excommunications, 51-54;
- superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by
- Paris green, 53
-
- Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, 2;
- office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, 3, 5;
- as satellites of Satan or agents of God, 5, 6, 52-57, 67;
- personification of, 10, 11;
- their competency as witnesses, 11;
- origin of their judicial prosecution, 12;
- as born criminals, 14;
- tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and,
- 14, 193;
- instances of their criminal prosecution, 16, 18, 21, 37-50, 93-124,
- 134-157, 160-163;
- methods of procedure against, 31;
- whether legally laity or clergy, 32;
- punitive and preventive prosecution of, 33;
- their consciousness of right and wrong, 35, 247;
- false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, 40;
- can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, 51;
- items of expense in prosecuting, 49, 138, 140-143;
- not mere machines, 66;
- in folk-lore, 84;
- worship of, 85;
- imperfect lists of prosecuted, 135-137;
- burned and buried alive, 138;
- put to the rack to extort confession, 139;
- confiscation of valuable, 164, 189;
- unclean flesh of executed, 169;
- imputed criminality of, 177;
- criminals as ferocious, 212;
- mental and moral qualities of men and, 234;
- six categories of their criminal offences, 235;
- the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of
- men and, 247-252
-
- Anatolus, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Angel, Emile, cited, 124
-
- Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, 168;
- its cruel doctrine of accessories, 178;
- on tainted swords, 187
-
- Angrô-mainyush, 57, 59, 61, 82
-
- Anthony, St., patron of pigs, 158
-
- Anthropologists, criminal researches of 211, 215
-
- Aquinas. _See_ Thomas
-
- Arcadius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Ashes, modern and mediæval use of vermifugal, 53
-
- Augustine, St., cited, 94, 106
-
- _Aura corrumpens_ in houses and stalls, 8
-
- Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, 75
-
- Avesta, on exorcisms, 36;
- on good and evil creations, 57;
- on mad dogs, 176
-
- Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, 109
-
- Azpilcueta, Martin. _See_ Dr. Navarre.
-
-
- Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, 84;
- his preference for black beasts, 165
-
- Bailly, Gaspard, his _Traité des Monitoires_ cited, 52, 92-108
-
- "Basilisk-egg," 10
-
- Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, 136
-
- Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, 183
-
- Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, 132
-
- Beasts, sweet and stenchy, 55
-
- Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, 9
-
- Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, 175
-
- Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, 212
-
- Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, 245
-
- Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, 28
-
- Bernardes, Manoel, his _Nova Floresta_, 124
-
- Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, 2, 17, 20;
- list of prosecuted animals, 135-137
-
- Bichat, his defective cranium, 217
-
- Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of
- unexpiated crime on persons and property, 6-8;
- his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, 73
-
- Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, 218
-
- Blackstone, on deodands, 186, 189, 192
-
- Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, 194
-
- "Blue Laws," an advance in penal legislation, 209
-
- Bodelschwingh, his _bacillus infernalis_, 91
-
- Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, 127
-
- Boër, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, 153
-
- Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, 155
-
- Bonnivard, François, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, 38
-
- Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, 208
-
- Bougeant, Père, his _Amusement Philosophique_ cited, 66-69;
- 80-86, 88-90, 92
-
- Bracton, 167;
- on deodands, 186
-
- Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, 217-219
-
- Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, 187
-
- Buggery, instances of this "nameless crime," 147-153;
- she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, 150;
- in the Carolina punished with death by fire, 151;
- in the Mosaic law, 152;
- sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, 153
-
- Bull, executed for murder, 161
-
-
- Calvin, his conception of God, 59
-
- Canute, King, 178
-
- Carolina, the, its severe penalties, 182
-
- Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, 151
-
- Cattle, bewitched by bad air, 8
-
- Cervantes, 167
-
- Character, factors in the formation of, 219;
- responsibility for, 239, 243
-
- Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, 80, 225
-
- Chassenée, Bartholomew, his _Consilia_, 2, 21-23;
- distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, 18;
- equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, 20;
- his erudition, 24;
- his absurd deductions, 26;
- regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, 32
-
- Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, 174
-
- Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan
- and as agents of God, 3-6;
- capital punishment never inflicted by, 31;
- its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, 50
-
- Cicero, cited, 22, 101;
- his approval of atrocious penalties, 178
-
- Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, 10, 11, 162;
- nature and origin of its supposed eggs, 163-5
-
- Cockatrice, 12, 163
-
- Coleridge, his definition of madman, 228
-
- Corpses, prosecuted and executed, 110, 198, 199;
- cannot inherit, 110
-
- "Corruption of blood," in theology and law, 181
-
- Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, 212
-
- Cows, executed for homicide, 169
-
- Cranks, execution of, 249-251
-
- Cretella, 17
-
- Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, 219;
- sentenced to death, 251
-
- Criminality, examples of imputed, 177-185;
- ancient and mediæval conceptions of, 200;
- punished for the safety of society, 211, 248;
- compared to vitriol, 212;
- supposed physical indices of, 213-217;
- casual and constitutional, 214-223;
- ativism the source of, 212, 215;
- the result of hypnotism, 223-225;
- due to many uncontrollable conditions, 230;
- motives underlying animal, 235;
- animals conscious of, 247;
- contagiousness of, 252, 256
-
- Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, 122
-
- Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, 30
-
- Cybele, invoked against vermin, 133
-
-
- Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his _Rerum Criminalium
- Praxis_, 16;
- citations from this work, 109, 146;
- regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy,
- 153
-
- Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra's teachings degraded by the, 59
-
- Demosthenes, cited, 172
-
- Deodands, nature of, 186-190, 192;
- abolished in England under Queen Victoria, 192
-
- Devils, their damage to landed property, 7;
- multiplied by the spread of Christianity, 13, 80;
- destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, 68-70;
- incarnate in every babe, 70;
- maladies produced by, 72;
- modern inventions the devices of, 229
-
- Didymos, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his
- assassination, 175
-
- Dogs, trial and execution of mad, 176;
- crucified in Rome for imputed crime, 177
-
- Döpler, Jacob, on sodomy, 152;
- on _Lex talionis_, 182;
- on vampires, 197
-
- Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, 57
-
- Draco (Drakôn), his law punishing weapons, 172
-
- Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, 253-255
-
- Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, 38
-
- Dumas, his _Count of Monte Christo_ cited, 240
-
- Duret, Jean, his _Treatise on Pains and Penalties_, 108
-
-
- Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime
- from a psychiatrical point of view, 170
-
- Eldrad, St., expels serpents, 50
-
- Electricity, execution by, 210
-
- Elk, as demon, 90
-
- Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, 172
-
- Erinnys, appeasing the, 174
-
- Escheat, in Scotch law, 189
-
- Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, 105
-
- Eustace, St., 56
-
- Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, 232
-
- Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, 3;
- sold at Rome, 30;
- properly speaking, animals not subject to, 51, 100;
- comical survivals of, 128.
- _See_ Anathemas
-
- Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, 27;
- applied as plasters, 72;
- superseded by conjurations among Protestants, 125;
- by Mohammedans, 137
-
-
- Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, 38
-
- _Felo de se_, a sort of treason, 190.
- _See_ Suicide
-
- Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, 253
-
- Field-mice, conjuration of, 133
-
- Flesh of executed animals tainted, 169
-
- Flies as demons, 28, 86
-
- Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, 136
-
- Fly-flaps, papal, 29
-
- Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, 198
-
- Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, 218
-
- Fox, diabolical nature of the, 56
-
- Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, 207
-
- Fricker, Thüring, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger,
- 116
-
-
- Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, 124
-
- Galton, on heredity, 239
-
- Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, 217
-
- Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers,
- 177
-
- Genius, to madness close allied, 228
-
- Görres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, 125
-
- Gratiolet, on the brain of the "Hottentot Venus," 218
-
- Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder,
- 9, 174
-
- Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, 132
-
- Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, 128
-
- Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bâle, 162
-
- Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, 250
-
-
- Harpokration, Valerius, cited, 172
-
- Harrison, Miss, cited, 187
-
- Hart, symbolism of the, 56
-
- Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, 252
-
- Hemmerlein, Felix. _See_ Malleolus
-
- Hens, crowing, 10
-
- Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and
- scientists, 232
-
- Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, 243
-
- Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, 249
-
- Honorius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Horses, condemned to death for homicide, 162
-
- Hubert, St., 56
-
- Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, 103
-
- Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild
- animals, 174
-
- Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, 223-226;
- as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, 225
-
-
- Idols, decapitation of, 174
-
- Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, 113-115;
- not in Noah's Ark, 120
-
- Insanity, degrees of, 200-203;
- in Italian and German law, 204-206;
- difficulty of defining, 226-228;
- in English law, 246;
- moral, 250;
- as a shelter for crime, 256
-
- Insects, prosecution of, 37, 41-49;
- incarnations of demons, 86
-
- Italy, palliation of crime in, 203, 204
-
-
- Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, 240-246
-
- Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, 152, 165
-
- John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, 28
-
- Jonson, Ben, cited, 130
-
- Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, 74
-
- Jörgensen, cited, 17
-
- Joshua, his penal cruelty, 180
-
- King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, 55
-
- Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, 219
-
- Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, 171
-
- Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, 171
-
-
- Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, 238
-
- Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, 235
-
- Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by,
- 141
-
- Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, 163
-
- Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, 223
-
- Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, 169
-
- Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, 73
-
- Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, 254
-
- Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal
- justice, 167;
- inflicts horrible mutilations, 182
-
- Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison,
- 175
-
- Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, 237
-
- Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, 3, 64;
- dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, 22, 93, 94;
- prosecution of, 95-108, 136
-
- Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical
- possession, 71
-
- Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, 14;
- opposed to trial by jury, 185;
- regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of
- criminality, 213;
- on ativism as the source of crime, 215;
- innate criminality not eradicated by education, 223;
- compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of
- animals, 251
-
- Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, 74
-
- Lycia, punished by imputation, 180
-
-
- Majolus, cited, 86
-
- Maledictions. _See_ Anathemas
-
- Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg
- professors, 27;
- records a prosecution of Spanish flies, 110;
- his formula for banning serpents, 121
-
- Mangin, Arthur, cited, 16, 139
-
- Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, 60
-
- Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta's skull to that of a savage, 217
-
- Mantegazza, Prof., his "tormentatore," 245
-
- Manu, Institutes of, 168
-
- Marro, on metaphors as facts, 216
-
- Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight
- beasts, 148
-
- Ménebréa, M. L., 2, 17;
- his theory untenable, 40
-
- Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, 85
-
- Mithridates, experiments with poisons, 244
-
- Moles, prosecution of, 111-113
-
- Monks, as landed proprietors in France, 158
-
- Monomania, frequency of, 227
-
- Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, 38
-
- Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, 176
-
- Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, 229
-
- Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, 170;
- barbarity of, 167, 180
-
- Murder, miasma of, 9, 174;
- weapons tainted by, 187-190
-
- Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, 176, 182
-
- Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, 64;
- in modern life, 228
-
-
- Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, 212
-
- Narrenkötterlein, dog sentenced to a, 175
-
- Nature, imperfection of, 61
-
- Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, 90
-
- Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, 63
-
- Nikôn, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence,
- 172
-
- Noah, God's covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts,
- 168
-
- Novels, morbific influence of sensational, 253
-
- Numa Pompilius, quoted, 106;
- his law for protecting boundary stones, 183
-
-
- Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, 68
-
- Osenbrüggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, 10,
- 17
-
- Ovid, quoted, 101, 103
-
- Oxen, executed, 168;
- punished although innocent, 183
-
-
- Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, 179
-
- Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, 198
-
- Pape, Guy, cited, 108
-
- Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, 126
-
- Pardoning power, exercise of the, 248
-
- Parsis, their Dasturs, 59;
- co-workers of Ahuramazda, 61, 82;
- no doctrine of atonement, 63
-
- Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, 62
-
- Patriotism as a perverter of justice, 185
-
- Pausanias cited, 172
-
- Penology, man and beast in modern, 14, 193;
- mediæval and modern, 15, 200, 206-210;
- in Italy and Germany, 203-206;
- brutality of mediæval, 206-209;
- moral and penal responsibility, 210;
- still inchoate, 15, 219-223, 257;
- deterrent aims of, 211, 248, 249;
- law of the survival of the fittest in, 221-223;
- punitive and preventive, 237;
- its relation to psycho-pathology, 248
-
- Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, 66
-
- Perjury, retaliative punishment of, 182
-
- Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, 118
-
- Phlebotomy. _See_ Blood-letting
-
- Pico di Mirandola, quoted, 103
-
- Piety, market value of, 7
-
- Pigs. _See_ Swine
-
- Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, 29
-
- Plato, his theory of creation, 59;
- on homicidal animals, 173;
- on retributive and preventive punishment, 237
-
- Pliny, quoted, 103
-
- Pollux, Julius, quoted, 172
-
- Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, 148
-
- Predestination in theology and science, 232-234
-
- Prussia, barbarous punishments, 180;
- opposed to reform, 205
-
- Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, 172;
- but not corpses, 199
-
- Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, 256
-
- Puritans, their penal enactments, 209
-
- Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, 87
-
-
- Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, 56-58
-
-
- Racine, his caricature of beast trials in _Les Plaideurs_, 166, 361
-
- Ram, banished to Siberia, 175
-
- Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, 130
-
- Rats, prosecution of, 18-21, 136;
- friendly letters of advice to, 129;
- Irish custom of rhyming, 130
-
- Raven, an imp of Satan, 57
-
- Renaud d'Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, 20
-
- Responsibility, moral and penal, 210
-
- Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of
- superstition, 14
-
- Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, 73
-
- Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and
- gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, 251;
- regards animals as often more rational than men, 252
-
-
- Satan, his earthly sovereignty, 60, 70;
- the doctrine of his final redemption, 68
-
- Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, 113, 120
-
- Schläger, cited, 176
-
- Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, 187
-
- Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, 113-115
-
- Scholasticism, quiddities of, 33
-
- Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, 127;
- man's responsibility for character alone, 239, 243
-
- Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, 178
-
- Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, 112
-
- Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, 147
-
- Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, 51;
- freed from poison by St. Hugon, 103
-
- Shakespeare, alludes to "be-rhymed" rats, 130;
- and a wolf on the gallows, 157
-
- Silius Italicus, quoted, 103
-
- Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, 253
-
- Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, 238
-
- Socrates, on self-perfection, 234
-
- Sodomy. _See_ Buggery
-
- Soldan, cited, 17
-
- Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, 128
-
- Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, 65;
- prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, 198;
- strangled in prison, 199
-
- Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, 190;
- condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, 191, 192;
- due to manifold influences, 229
-
- Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, 14
-
- Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, 28
-
- Swine, execution of, 16, 140-145, 149, 153-157, 161, 169;
- as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, 56, 165;
- Gadarene, 69, 91, 165
-
- Swords, tainted, 187
-
-
- Taine, his definition of man, 214
-
- Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, 236
-
- Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, 180
-
- Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, 213
-
- Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their
- defender as more industrious than the friars, 123
-
- Tertullian, quoted, 106
-
- Theognis, his bust punished for murder, 172
-
- Thomas à Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., 198
-
- Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, 53-55,
- 88, 101, 103
-
- Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, 90
-
- Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, 37, 94, 107
-
- Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, 1, 170
-
- Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law,
- 179-181
-
- Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the
- fig-tree, 25
-
- Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, 75
-
- Tribunals, proper office of criminal, 211, 232, 248
-
- Tritheim, on Satan's invisible apparition, 166
-
- Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, 179
-
- Türler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical
- court of Berne, 170
-
-
- Vampires, superstitions concerning, 195-198
-
- Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, 178
-
- Venidad, quoted, 63
-
- Ventilation, "bewitched kine" the result of bad, 8
-
- Vermin. _See_ Insects
-
- Virgil, quoted, 26
-
-
- Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, 38-49
-
- Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, 75
-
- Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, 195;
- decree for their extermination, 198
-
- _Werther_, Goethe's, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, 253
-
- Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, 125
-
- Witches in Judaic and mediæval law, on a par with animals, 145;
- rendered harmless by burning, 196
-
- Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, 9
-
-
- Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, 57-59
-
- Zoöpsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology,
- 237
-
- Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, 201
-
-
-_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] The name is also spelled Chassanée and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.
-
-[2] "Item: a été délibéré que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l'on contribuera aux frais au pro rata."
-
-[3] These animals are spoken of as _unvernünftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmäuse_. _Lut_ might be derived from the Old German _lût_ (_Laut_,
-Schrei), in which case _Lutmaus_ would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from _lutum_ (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediæval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.
-
-[4] The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of "monitoires" and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.
-
-[5] A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.
-
-[6] This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.
-
-[7] Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.
-
-[8] In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.
-
-[9] In modern French _pendard_ means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.
-
-[10] Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.
-
-[11] _Mietkuhe_, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
-
-The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with
-transliterations in this text version.
-
-The original text includes a Maltese Cross symbol that is represented as
-[+] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
-
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-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive.)
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-
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-</pre>
-
-
-
-<p class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-
-<h1><small>THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION<br />AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT<br />OF ANIMALS</small></h1>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<div class="vertsbox">
-<p class="center"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><b>ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE.</b> Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9<i>s.</i></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><b>EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY.</b> In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9<i>s.</i></p>
-
-<p class="center">LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN</p></div>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br />
-<a href="images/frontis.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></div>
-<p class="center"><span class="large"><i>Execution of a Sow.</i></span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="giant">THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION<br />
-AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT<br />
-OF ANIMALS</span></p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">By</span> <span class="large">E. P. EVANS</span><br />
-<small>AUTHOR OF<br />
-“ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,â€<br />
-“EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY,†ETC., ETC.</small></p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><img src="images/title_tmb.jpg" alt="" /><br />
-<a href="images/title.jpg"><small>Larger Image</small></a></p>
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">LONDON<br />
-WILLIAM HEINEMANN<br />
-MCMVI</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann</i></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[Pg v]</a></span></p>
-<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2">Sources&mdash;Amira’s distinction between retributive and preventive processes&mdash;Addosio’s incorrect designation of the
-latter as civil suits&mdash;Inconsistent attitude of the Church in excommunicating animals&mdash;Causal relation of crime
-to demoniacal possession&mdash;Squatter sovereignty of devils&mdash;<i>Aura corrumpens</i>&mdash;Diabolical infestation and lack
-of ventilation&mdash;“Bewitched kineâ€&mdash;Greek furies and Christian demons&mdash;Homicidal bees, laying cocks and
-crowing hens&mdash;Theory of the personification of animals&mdash;Beasts in Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws&mdash;Animal
-prosecutions and witchcraft&mdash;The Mosaic code in Christian courts&mdash;Pagan deities as demons&mdash;Born
-malefactors among beasts&mdash;The theory of punishment in modern criminology</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_1"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;1</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2">Criminal prosecution of rats&mdash;Chassenée appointed to defend them&mdash;Report of the trial&mdash;Chassenée employed as
-counsel in other cases of this kind&mdash;His dissertation on the subject&mdash;Nature of his argument&mdash;Authorities and
-precedents&mdash;The withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and explained by Dr. Trench&mdash;Eels and blood-suckers
-in Lake Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of Heidelberg theologians&mdash;White
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[Pg vi]</a></span>bread turned black, and swallows, fish, and flies
-destroyed by anathema&mdash;St. Pirminius expels reptiles&mdash;Vermifugal efficacy of St. Magnus’ crosier&mdash;Papal
-execratories&mdash;Animals regarded by the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of clergy&mdash;Methods
-of procedure&mdash;Jurisdiction of the courts&mdash;Records of judicial proceedings against insects&mdash;Important trial of
-weevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over more than eight months&mdash;Untenableness of Ménebréa’s theory&mdash;Summary
-of the pleadings&mdash;Futile attempts at compromise&mdash;Final decision doubtful&mdash;St. Eldrad and the
-snakes&mdash;Views of Thomas Aquinas&mdash;Distinction between excommunication and anathema&mdash;“Sweet beasts
-and stenchy beastsâ€&mdash;Animals as incarnations of devils&mdash;Their diabolical character assumed in papal formula
-for blessing water to kill vermin&mdash;Amusing treatise by Père Bougeant on this subject&mdash;All animals animated by
-devils, and all pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them&mdash;Demons the real causes of diseases&mdash;Father
-Lohbauer’s prescription in such cases&mdash;Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.&mdash;Recent instances of
-demoniacal possession&mdash;Hoppe’s psychological explanation of them&mdash;Charcot on faith-cures&mdash;Why not the duty
-of the Catholic Church to inculcate kindness to animals&mdash;Zoölatry a form of demonolatry&mdash;Gnats especially
-dangerous devils&mdash;Bodelschwingh’s discovery of the <i>bacillus infernalis</i>&mdash;Gaspard Bailly’s disquisition with
-specimens of plaints, pleas, etc.&mdash;Ayrault protests against such proceedings&mdash;Hemmerlein’s treatise on exorcisms&mdash;Criminal
-prosecution of field-mice&mdash;Vermin excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne&mdash;Protocol of
-judicial proceedings against caterpillars&mdash;Conjurers of cabbage-worms&mdash;Swallows proscribed by a Protestant
-parson&mdash;Custom of writing letters of advice to rats&mdash;Writs of ejectment served on them&mdash;Rhyming rats
-in Ireland&mdash;Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos&mdash;Capital punishment of larger quadrupeds&mdash;Berriat-Saint-Prix’s
-Reports and Researches&mdash;List of culprits&mdash;Beasts burned and buried alive and put to the
-rack&mdash;Swine executed for infanticide&mdash;Bailly’s bill of expenses&mdash;An ox decapitated for its demerits&mdash;Punishment
-of buggery&mdash;Cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy&mdash;Trial of a sow and six
-sucklings for murder&mdash;Bull sent to the gallows for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span>
-killing a lad&mdash;A horse condemned to death for homicide&mdash;A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural crime of
-laying an egg&mdash;Lapeyronie’s investigation of the subject&mdash;Racine’s satire on such prosecutions in <i>Les Plaideurs</i>;
-<i>Lex talionis</i>&mdash;Tit for tat the law of the primitive man and the savage&mdash;The application of this iron rule in
-Hebrew legislation&mdash;Flesh of a culprit pig not to be eaten&mdash;Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects&mdash;Recent
-execution of idols in China&mdash;Russian bell sentenced to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection&mdash;Pillory
-for dogs in Vienna&mdash;Treatment prescribed for mad dogs in the Avesta&mdash;Cruelty of laws,
-of talion and decrees of corruption of blood&mdash;Examples in ancient and modern legislation&mdash;Cicero approves of
-such penalties for political offences&mdash;Survival of this conception of justice in theology&mdash;Constitutio Criminalis
-Carolina&mdash;Lombroso opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism&mdash;Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts&mdash;Deodand
-in English law&mdash;Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland&mdash;Blackstone’s theory of it untenable&mdash;Penalties
-inflicted for suicide&mdash;Ancient legislation on this subject&mdash;Legalization of suicide&mdash;Abolition of deodands in England</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_18"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;18</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center">MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2">Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence&mdash;Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the
-intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to untie&mdash;Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law&mdash;Restless
-ghosts of criminals who died unpunished&mdash;Execution of vampires and were-wolves&mdash;Case of a were-wolf
-who devoured little children “even on Fridayâ€&mdash;Pope Stephen VI. brings the corpse of his predecessor
-to trial&mdash;Mediæval and modern conceptions of culpability&mdash;Problems of psycho-pathological jurisprudence&mdash;Degrees
-of mental vitiation&mdash;Italians pioneers in the scientific study of criminality&mdash;Effects of these speculations
-upon legislation&mdash;Barbarity of mediæval penal justice&mdash;Gradual abolition of judicial torture&mdash;Cruel
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo&mdash;“Blue Lawsâ€
-a great advance on contemporary English penal codes&mdash;Moral and penal responsibility&mdash;Atavism and criminality&mdash;Physical
-abnormities&mdash;Capacity and symmetry of the skull&mdash;Circumvolutions of the brain&mdash;Tattooing not a
-peculiarity of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense&mdash;Theories of the origin and nature of
-crime&mdash;Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the encephalon&mdash;Remarkable exceptions in
-Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo&mdash;Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the penal
-codes of to-day&mdash;Measures proposed by Lombroso and his school&mdash;Their conclusions not sustained by facts&mdash;Crime
-through hypnotic suggestion&mdash;Difficulty of defining insanity&mdash;Coleridge’s definition too inclusive&mdash;Predestination
-and evolution&mdash;Criminality among the lower animals&mdash;Punishment preventive or retributive&mdash;Schopenhauer’s
-doctrine of responsibility for character&mdash;Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret&mdash;“Method in Madnessâ€
-not uncommon&mdash;Social safety the supreme law&mdash;Application of this principle to “Cranksâ€&mdash;Spirit of imitation peculiarly
-strong in such classes&mdash;Contagiousness of crime&mdash;Criminology now in a period of transition</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_193"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;193</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" align="center"><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_A">A.</a></td>
- <td>De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum
- volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu Amblevins</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_259"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;259</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_B">B.</a></td>
- <td>Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_287"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;287</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_C">C.</a></td>
- <td>Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_307"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;307</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_D">D.</a></td>
- <td>Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_309"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;309</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_E">E.</a></td>
- <td>Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span>sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_311"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;311</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_F">F.</a></td>
- <td>Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_313"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;313</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_G">G.</a></td>
- <td>Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a new glove</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_335"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;335</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_H">H.</a></td>
- <td>Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois
- from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_336"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;336</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_I">I.</a></td>
- <td>Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the
- king’s proctor, on March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that had devoured a small child</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_338"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;338</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_J">J.</a></td>
- <td>Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche,
- acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_340"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;340</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_K">K.</a></td>
- <td>Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of the Friar
- Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine, which had been condemned
- to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three sows</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_342"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;342</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_L">L.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned together with a bitch</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_344"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;344</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_M">M.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January, 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence
- of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_346"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;346</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span><a href="#APPENDIX_N">N.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near
- Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for negligence,
- because the child was their fosterling</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_352"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;352</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_O">O.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning
- a pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_354"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;354</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_P">P.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of Judicatory of
- Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the
- inhabitants of the said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an arbitrary fine</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_356"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;356</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_Q">Q.</a></td>
- <td>Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupré, for furiously killing
- Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen years of age</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_358"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;358</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_R">R.</a></td>
- <td>Scene from Racine’s comedy <i>Les Plaideurs</i>, in which a dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_360"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;360</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td valign="top"><a href="#APPENDIX_S">S.</a></td>
- <td>Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621</td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_361"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;361</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" valign="top"><span class="smcap">Bibliography</span></td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_362"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;362</a></td></tr>
-<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td colspan="2" valign="top"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
- <td align="right" valign="bottom"><a href="#Page_373"><i>p.</i>&nbsp;373</a></td></tr></table>
-
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><span class="huge">THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND<br />CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS</span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<h2><a name="INTRODUCTION" id="INTRODUCTION"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
-
-
-<p>The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled “Bugs and Beasts before the Law,†and “Modern and Mediæval
-Punishment,†which appeared in <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i>, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira’s <i>Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse</i> (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d’Addosio’s <i>Bestie Delinquenti</i> (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler’s <i>Thierprocesse in der Schweiz</i> (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span>
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Ménebréa, and the <i>Consilium Primum</i> of Bartholomew Chassenée, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.</p>
-
-<p>Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-“metaphysical aid†and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>D’Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(<i>processi civili</i>); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the <i>anathema
-maranatha</i> and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.</p>
-
-<p>The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(<i>instigante sathana, per<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> maleficium diabolicum</i>), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (<i>diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias</i>); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.</p>
-
-<p>It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled <i>Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale</i>, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-“godliness is profitable†not only “unto all things,†but also,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> as
-mediæval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his “son Timothy†never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the <i>aura corrumpens</i> resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an <i>aura corrumpens</i> arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-<i>benedictiones locorum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-“bewitched kine.†European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.</p>
-
-<p>The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediæval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-“transgressed in the thing accursed.†It was the same horror of aiding
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-“basilisk-egg,†or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.</p>
-
-<p>A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrüggen (<i>Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte.</i> Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediæval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king’s ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: <i>Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis</i>. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrüggen’s
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bâle was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.</p>
-
-<p>The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind’s eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.</p>
-
-<p>Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, <i>Die
-deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube</i>: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as <i>Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des göttlichen Herzens Jesu</i>, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.</p>
-
-<p>It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are <i>i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali</i>, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as <i>bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia</i>; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.</p>
-
-<p>In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin’s <i>L’Homme et la Bête</i> (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.</p>
-
-<p>The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder’s <i>Praxis Rerum Criminalium</i>
-(Antverpiæ, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled “De Damno Pecuario†is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.</p>
-
-<p>The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.</p>
-
-<p>The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are “Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere,†in <i>Miscellen aus
-der neuesten ausländischen Literatur</i> (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Jörgensen’s <i>Nogle Frugter af mit Otium</i> (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella’s “Gli Animali sotto Processo,†in <i>Fanfulla della Domenica</i>
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Ménabréa, and Soldan’s “La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia,†in <i>Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia</i>
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrüggen’s theory.</p>
-
-<p>In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
-<p class="title">BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW</p>
-
-
-<p>It is said that Bartholomew Chassenée,<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l’Evêque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop’s
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenée to defend them.</p>
-
-<p>In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenée
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.</p>
-
-<p>At a later period of his life Chassenée was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrières and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d’Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenée thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: <i>Recherches</i>, etc.
-(<i>vide</i> Bibliography), p. 18.]</p>
-
-<p>In the report of the trial published in the <i>Thémis Jurisconsulte</i> for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenée conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.</p>
-
-<p>Chassenée is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-<i>Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum</i>. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenée now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(<i>sed an recte et de jure fieri possit</i>), and how it should be effected.
-“The principal question,†he says, “is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (<i>De Off.</i> I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent.†He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: “First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, <i>i.e.</i> through
-procurators<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication.†Chassenée’s method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.</p>
-
-<p>The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediæval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.</p>
-
-<p>His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by “whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero.†The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called “wisdom of ages,†renders him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.</p>
-
-<p>In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenée refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David’s malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God’s curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, “Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire,†he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: “If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less†(<i>cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus</i>).</p>
-
-<p>An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: “It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false.†According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that “drew on it the curse.†The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: “Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart.†As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediæval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, “for the time of figs was not yet.â€</p>
-
-<p>A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenée is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil’s first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that “no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds,†all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since “no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema.†Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer’s dissertation.</p>
-
-<p>Coming down to more recent times, Chassenée mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his <i>Tractatus de Exorcismis</i> (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: <i>omnes studii Heydelbergensis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt</i>. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib’s host, “all dead corpses.†William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (<i>palis
-ejicientes</i>). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [<i>Vita S. Bernardi</i>, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and “no other remedy was at hand.â€
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-“deacons with fly-flaps,†who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed “to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth.â€</p>
-
-<p>The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints’
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed <i>pro rata</i>;<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a> in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus’ Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter’s Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.</p>
-
-<p>In his “First Counsel†Chassenée not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent <i>in causa sanguinis</i>, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[<i>Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia</i> (<i>exigentia</i> is obviously the correct reading)
-<i>castigare</i>. Cons. prim. IV. § 5.] For<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word “conjurerâ€
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.</p>
-
-<p>Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenée<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have <i>ordinem clericatus</i> and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (<i>deberet estud probare</i>). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-<i>clerus</i>; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediæval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.</p>
-
-<p>Chassenée also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that “things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them.†Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where “Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass.â€</p>
-
-<p>Chassenée endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zoö-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenée insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision&mdash;<i>nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat</i>&mdash;and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that “sin is not imputed when there is no law.†He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere <i>brutum fulmen</i>. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be “well-thought, well-said and well-done,†not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: <i>humata
-hûkhta huvarshta</i>. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; “and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema.†In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (<i>adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallicè urebecs</i>, probably a species of <i>curculio</i>), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenée, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man’s sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.</p>
-
-<p>The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charançon)
-known to entomologists as <i>rychites auratus</i>, and called by different
-names, amblevin, bèche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.</p>
-
-<p>Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-François Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: “Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (<i>animas vegetativas</i>), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> sins.†Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (<i>ex toto et puro corde</i>), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A <i>procès-verbal</i>,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.</p>
-
-<p>About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: <i>De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins</i>. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Léon Ménebréa, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: <i>De l’origine de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-âge contre les animaux</i>. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the <i>Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie</i>.</p>
-
-<p>It may be proper to add that Ménebréa’s theory of “the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given,†is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that “these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity.â€</p>
-
-<p>This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediæval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.</p>
-
-<p>But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before “his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official†by the
-syndics and procurators, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: “Formerly by virtue of divine services<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (<i>ex integro</i>) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication.â€</p>
-
-<p>In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (<i>salario
-moderato</i>), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (<i>humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis</i>).</p>
-
-<p>The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants’ advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a <i>dies feriatus</i> or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, François Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants’ plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no <i>raison d’être</i>
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs’ replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, “a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God.†It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.</p>
-
-<p>On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (<i>alium terminum</i>), which was granted.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>Meanwhile, in view of the law’s long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d’Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (<i>manants et habitants</i>) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs’ advocate, François Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-“without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals,†and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it “in good form and of perpetual validity,†provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed “L. Prunier,
-curial,†and stamped with the seal of the commune.</p>
-
-<p>But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an “Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien,†containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the <i>procès-verbal</i> and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till “the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation,†which fell on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.</p>
-
-<p>At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (<i>actento transitu armigerorum</i>), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (<i>petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis</i>). The “egregious Petremand Bertrand,†in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.</p>
-
-<p>The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.</p>
-
-<p>In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: “<i>pro visitatione III flor.</i>,†by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then “<i>solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor.</i>,†which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-“<i>item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor.</i>,†three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop’s official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (<i>Vide</i>
-<a href="#APPENDIX_A">Appendix A</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man’s labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.</p>
-
-<p>It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (<i>Le Père Rochex:
-Gloire de l’Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise</i>), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> of a priory in the valley of
-Briançon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God’s creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediæval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.</p>
-
-<p>Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-“waived†or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his <i>Traité des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects</i>, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.</p>
-
-<p>One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (<i>s’en prendre à<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> Dieu</i>). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediæval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.</p>
-
-<p>Thomas Aquinas, the “angelic doctor,†in his <i>Summa Theologiæ</i> raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (<i>utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare</i>). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man’s
-subsistence; Jesus cursed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother’s womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of “the beauty of Israelâ€; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.</p>
-
-<p>It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (<i>nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret</i>). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them <i>secundem se</i>, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (<i>est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum</i>).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan “instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> proper to be cursed,†as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75),
-and adds “the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (<i>per modum conclusionis</i>) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment.†This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.</p>
-
-<p>But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled <i>Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio</i> (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was “printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,â€
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-“several fine moralities,†and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (<i>bestes
-doulces</i>) and stenchy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> beasts (<i>bestes puantes</i>). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.â€</p>
-
-<p>According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.</p>
-
-<p>Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: “Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious.†“We are all,†adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, “more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended.†Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.</p>
-
-<p>This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (<i>humata</i>,
-<i>hûkhta</i>, <i>huvarshta</i>), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (<i>dushmata</i>, <i>duzhûkhta</i>,
-<i>duzhvarshta</i>), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe&mdash;the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre&mdash;so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these “mighty opposites,†the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that “dreadful idealization of wickedness†which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs&mdash;as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences&mdash;into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.</p>
-
-<p>Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Red in tooth and claw<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">With ravin,â€</span></p>
-
-<p>that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“One far-off divine event,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">To which the whole creation moves,â€</span></p>
-
-<p>consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.</p>
-
-<p>Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature’s handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Move upward, working out the beast,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And let the ape and tiger die.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Angrômainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (<i>speñtô mainyush</i>), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer’s)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.</p>
-
-<p>But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediæval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’
-claws.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, “dire
-chimeras†and other “delicate monsters,†there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Dædalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actæon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Mæra
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.</p>
-
-<p>Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: “I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought.†In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to “preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits.â€</p>
-
-<p>This subject was treated in a lively and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Père Bougeant, in a book entitled <i>Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes</i>, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: “<i>Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium</i>,†and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes’ <i>Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae</i>, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.</p>
-
-<p>If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.</p>
-
-<p>But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God’s mercy or wrath is lost. “Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion.†The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels.†Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been “prepared†for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two “exceeding
-fierce†demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, “Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?†This question has no
-significance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Père Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.</p>
-
-<p>Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> Some of them are engaged in “going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it,†in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-“science falsely so called.†Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to “forsake the devil and all his works.â€
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.</p>
-
-<p>The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled <i>Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci</i> by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (<i>Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone</i>). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.</p>
-
-<p>The Catholic Church has a general form of <i>Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum</i>, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-<i>Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas</i> worthy of a place in any
-mediæval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a <i>Manuale
-Benedictionum</i>, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled <i>Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale</i>.</p>
-
-<p>That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of “a maiden of angelic beauty†in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stöcker and Rector Ahlwardt in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: “O, that Jew! Didn’t
-he have to drink gall?†When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him “go to hell,†which he forthwith did, “moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-‘Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!’ The voice was so sad,â€
-adds the bishop, “that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil.â€</p>
-
-<p>Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, “Every knee in
-heaven and on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> earth shall bow to the name of Jesus,†the fallen “Son
-of the Morning†retorted, “Not Luci, not Luci&mdash;never!â€</p>
-
-<p>It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstätt. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-“Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops.†In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled <i>Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding</i>, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession “is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church.†Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.</p>
-
-<p>Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the “metaphysical aid†of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.</p>
-
-<p>Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that “what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it.†But while affirming that “evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind,†and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.</p>
-
-<p>The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on <i>Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklärung des Besessenseins</i>
-(<i>Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie</i>, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. “The priest,†he
-says, “exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils.†Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of “priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> means of healing,†and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-<i>Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891</i> (Saarbrücken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the “holy coat†in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called “documentary proofs,†consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-“were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner.†He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person’s own<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: “If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.â€
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: “Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole.†Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people’s lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum’s assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on “Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition†in Appleton’s <i>Popular Science Monthly</i> for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).</p>
-
-<p>The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it “hath no skill in surgery.â€</p>
-
-<p>But to return from this digression, Père Bougeant’s theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, “enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> the first act of God’s vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell.â€</p>
-
-<p>Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angrô-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. “What matters it,â€
-replies the Jesuit Father, “whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned.†The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about “des
-Pudels Kern.â€</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim <i>universitas non delinquit</i> has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, <i>quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus</i>, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That “the devil is an ass†is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-<i>débris</i> of exploded mythologies adrift on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Der Herr der Ratten und der Mäuse,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Der Fliegen, Frösche, Wanzen, Läuse.â€</span><br />
-<br />
-“The Lord of rats and of the mice,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zoölatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. “It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> an elephant.†The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person’s stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the <i>Dies Caniculuares</i> of
-Majolus (Meyer: <i>Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters</i>, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.</p>
-
-<p>As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. “Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing.†The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, “which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason.†Furthermore, it explains why “all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase.†Of the millions of
-germs, of which “great creating nature†is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing “any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils,†which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. “This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects.†The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.</p>
-
-<p>Father Bougeant calls his lucubration “a new system of philosophyâ€; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant’s ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he “protests too much, methinks.†In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(<i>fürchterliche Zauberteufel</i>). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.</p>
-
-<p>A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-“fish or cacodemons†(<i>pisces seu cacodemones</i>), and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenée on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.</p>
-
-<p>In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls “demonic infection†due to the presence of the <i>bacillus
-infernalis</i> in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of <i>bacilli infernales</i> which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Père Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.</p>
-
-<p>The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled <i>Traité des Monitoires</i>, already mentioned, treats “Of the
-Excellence of Monitories†and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-“one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them.â€</p>
-
-<p>M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as <i>post hoc,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
-ergo propter hoc</i>. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which “came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (<i>i.e.</i> brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood.†Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects “were as long as a man’s
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure.†Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew’s
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of “inch of candle,†and anathematized them “in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.†Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, “having six wings with two teeth harder than flintâ€
-and “darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm,†laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of <i>De
-Civitate Dei</i> as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.</p>
-
-<p>In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.</p>
-
-<p>The most important portion of M. Bailly’s work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (<i>requeste des
-habitans</i>), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (<i>plaidoyer des habitans</i>), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (<i>plaidoyer pour les insectes</i>), the
-replication of the inhabitants (<i>réplique des habitans</i>), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (<i>réplique du defendeur</i>), the conclusions of the bishop’s
-proctor (<i>conclusions du procureur episcopal</i>), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (<i>sentence du juge d’église</i>), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:</p>
-
-<p>“Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Cæsar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the <i>Iliad</i>, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; <i>nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus</i>: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: ‘Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’†The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a “horse-load
-of citations†from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: “The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray.â€</p>
-
-<p>It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> rhetorical hotchpotch of “matter and
-impertinency mixed†as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.</p>
-
-<p>Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:</p>
-
-<p>“Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(<i>bestioles</i>), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.</p>
-
-<p>“Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph <i>Si quadrupes</i>, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: <i>Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret</i>.</p>
-
-<p>“The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute <i>De poen. tem. litig.</i> As regards these animals there is no <i>causa
-justa litigandi</i>; they are not bound in any manner, <i>non tenentur ex
-contractu</i>, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, <i>neque ex quasi contractu</i>, <i>neque ex
-stipulatione</i>, <i>neque ex pacto</i>, and still less <i>ex delicto seu quasi</i>,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.</p>
-
-<p>“Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(<i>qui ne porte coup</i>); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing <i>mal à propos</i> or in vain: <i>Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra</i>. Now I leave it to you to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: <i>cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent</i>.â€</p>
-
-<p>The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: <i>quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet</i>. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as <i>extra ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio</i>. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> as the apostle Paul says: “Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without.†<i>Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est.</i>
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (<i>quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis</i>).</p>
-
-<p>A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them “every green herb for meat,†a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero’s treatise <i>De
-Officiis</i>, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (<i>s’en prendre à Dieu</i>), who has said: “I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number.â€
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-<i>Metamorphoses</i> of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. “It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(<i>d’ores en avant</i>) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted.â€</p>
-
-<p>“To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness.†The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of “vile and paltry
-vermin.†In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs’ advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. “But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death.â€</p>
-
-<p>That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): “Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment,†<i>i.e.</i> unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-“like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.†The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to “send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you.†It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.</p>
-
-<p>The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:</p>
-
-<p>“The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (<i>à la volée</i>), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it.†[This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-“Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.â€] The bishop’s proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. “It is truly a deep sea,†he says, “in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (<i>lettres closes</i>).†He
-suggests it may be “because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors,†and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (<i>liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium</i>). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.</p>
-
-<p>After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop’s proctor is simply an
-<i>oratio pro domo</i>, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.</p>
-
-<p>The official begins by stating the case as that of “The People <i>versus</i>
-Locusts,†declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-“by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,â€
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> and solace. “Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:</p>
-
-<p>“In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere.†If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech “Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils,†to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially “the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> particularly offensive character.â€
-(<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_B">Appendix B</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical <i>non sequiturs</i> and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediæval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his <i>Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble</i> (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: “<i>si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic.</i>†Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(<i>Traicté des Peines et des Amendes</i>, p. 250; cf. <i>Thémis Jurisconsulte</i>,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that “if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed.†The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his <i>Rerum Criminalium Praxis</i> (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, <i>lieutenant-criminel au siége
-présidial d’Angers</i>, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: <i>Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, à la Mémoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimées et aux Contumax</i>, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (<i>legales homines</i>) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that “a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality†could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man’s memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.</p>
-
-<p>Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his <i>Tractatus de Exorcismis</i>, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but “in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority,†the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who “defended them with great dignityâ€; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.</p>
-
-<p>In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a> which damaged the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> crops
-“by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow.†But “in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress,†a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, “to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings.â€
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvæ and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that “a free safe-conduct<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy.†(<i>Vide</i>
-<a href="#APPENDIX_C">Appendix C</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his “dearly
-beloved†are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-“with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm†and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by “a common
-prayer from house to house†to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: “Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah’s ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o’clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice.†The priest
-then exhorts his “dear children†devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_D">Appendix D</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger’s trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be “utterly intolerable.†This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.</p>
-
-<p>The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thüring Fricker
-to prosecute the case: “We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thüring Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (<i>brucorum</i>), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479.â€</p>
-
-<p>The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less “of the
-law’s delay†than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: “Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:</p>
-
-<p>“We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. <i>Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi.</i>â€
-The phrase <i>das si beswärt werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers</i> does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be <i>brutum fulmen</i>; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, “owing to our sins.†Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.</p>
-
-<p>The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah’s ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.</p>
-
-<p>Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: “By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God.†Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: “O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.â€</p>
-
-<p>In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza’s <i>Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna</i> it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right “does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject.†Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.</p>
-
-<p>More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhão, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God’s creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an <i>argumentum ad
-monachum</i> by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes’
-<i>Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes</i>, etc. Vol. V., Lisboá, 1747.]</p>
-
-<p>About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-“vergifteten Würmer,†and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.</p>
-
-<p>In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Görres’
-<i>Historisch-Politische Blätter</i> for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: “If you don’t leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof.†This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.</p>
-
-<p>The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to “the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature.†This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By “fervent
-desire†merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man’s body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-“for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute.†Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as “doing in the spirit of the will,†an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer’s doctrine of
-“the objectivation of the will.†Indeed, Schopenhauer’s postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.</p>
-
-<p>It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man’s spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by “Augustus Duke and Elector,†wherein he commends the
-“Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> Greysser,†for
-having “put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God’s word and of Christian devotion.†But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (<i>durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege</i>); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See <a href="#APPENDIX_E">Appendix E</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on “Conjuring Rats,†printed
-in <i>The Journal of American Folk-Lore</i> (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, “Maine, Oct. 31, 1888,†and addressed in
-business style to “Messrs. Rats and Co.†The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they “can live snug
-and happy†in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use “Rough on Rats.†This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.</p>
-
-<p>In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">“Ratton and mouse,</span><br />
-Lea’ the puir woman’s house,<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>Gang awa’ owre by to ’e mill,<br />
-And there ane and a’ ye’ll get your fill.â€</p>
-
-<p>In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“A running stream they dare na cross.â€</p>
-
-<p>In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.</p>
-
-<p>It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or “rhyming†rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in <i>As you Like It</i> Rosalind says in reference to Orlando’s verses:
-“I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember.†Randolph declares:</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 12em;">“My poets</span><br />
-Shall with a satire, steep’d in gall and vinegar,<br />
-Rhime ’em to death, as they do rats in Ireland.â€</p>
-
-<p>Ben Jonson is still more specific:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Rhime ’em to death, as they do Irish rats,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">In drumming tunes.â€</span></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.</p>
-
-<p>In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(<i>la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures</i>), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Sortez, sortez d’ici, mulots!<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Quittez, quittez ces blés!</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Allez, vous trouverez</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Dans la cave du curé</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Plus à boire qu’à manger.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Taupes et mulots,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Sors de mon clos,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Ou je te casse les os;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Je te brûle la barbe jusqu’aux os.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of “Callithumpian†music.</p>
-
-<p>Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his <i>History of the Franks</i> (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: <i>Hist, des Évêques du Mans</i>, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: <i>Recherches</i>, etc., p. 7.)</p>
-
-<p>The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled τὰ γεωπονικά
-and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by the
-Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is given
-for getting rid of field-mice:</p>
-
-<p>“Take a slip of paper and write on it these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces.†The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the “Geoponicsâ€
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee’s letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.</p>
-
-<p>In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: “In yonder
-village is church-ale (<i>Kirmes</i>)â€; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: <i>Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebräuche aus Thüringen</i>. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (<i>Wetterkreuze</i>) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ’s death and the world’s
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Protect this house and burn the rest.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the <i>Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France</i> (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D’Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (<i>Vide</i>
-<a href="#APPENDIX_F">Appendix F</a> for a still fuller list.)</p>
-
-<p>The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (<i>Amira</i>, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of “Phélippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens,†for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-“having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (<i>étoit allé de vie a trépas</i>).†In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-“buried all alive†(<i>enfoui tout vif</i>), “for having devoured a little
-child in l’hostel de la Couronne.†Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, “on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,â€
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Würtemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-“powerful medicine†to stay the epizoötic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.</p>
-
-<p>Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (<i>L’Homme et la Bête.</i> Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that “the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt,†is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. “The question,†which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.</p>
-
-<p>In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the <i>lex talionis</i>, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man’s
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a “master of high works†(<i>maître des hautes œuvres</i>), as
-he was officially styled. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_G">Appendix G</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>We may add that the west wall of the south<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span> branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (<i>Sainte-Trinité</i>) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in <i>Statistique de Falaise</i> (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l’Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his <i>Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise</i> (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, <i>la châsse de la bannière</i> (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.</p>
-
-<p>In 1394, a pig was found guilty of “having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff.†The work was really done by the hangman (<i>pendart</i>),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of “fifty souls
-tournois.†(<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_H">Appendix H</a>.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>“Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.</p>
-
-<p>“Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
-perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
-bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
-sols parisis.</p>
-
-<p>“Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.</p>
-
-<p>“Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.</p>
-
-<p>“Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis.â€</p></div>
-
-<p>This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-“in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403.†(See <a href="#APPENDIX_I">Appendix I</a>.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.</p>
-
-<p>Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus “Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche,†acknowledges the
-receipt, “through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (<i>vicomte</i>) of the said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king’s bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison.†The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with “Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July,†when it was hanged “for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child†(<i>pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant</i>). For the pig’s board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account “ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape.†The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by “Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche.†(<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_J">Appendix J</a>.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged “until death ensueth,†for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d’Or,
-was left hanging “for a long space†on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: <i>Histoire de Saint-Omer</i>, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Châlons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: <i>dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum</i>. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: <i>De poena bruti
-delinquentis</i>. Lugduni, MDCX.)</p>
-
-<p>On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become <i>participes criminis</i>,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (<i>Vide</i>
-<a href="#APPENDIX_K">Appendix K</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>A peculiar custom is referred to in the <i>procès verbal</i> of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be “hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet.†The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. “From time immemorial,†we are told, “the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked.†The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“’Twill be recorded for a precedent;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">And many an error, by the same example</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">Will rush into the state: it cannot be.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (<i>vitiosus et calcitrosus</i>), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his <i>Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis</i> (<i>cap. de carnifice</i>, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, “assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice.†Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> torn the hand of a carpenter’s child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there “hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city.†For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.</p>
-
-<p>Buggery (<i>offensa cujus nominatio crimen est</i>, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (<i>punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur</i>), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be “hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted.†A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (<i>assommée</i>) by the executioner of high justice and
-“the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes.†It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_L">Appendix L</a>.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his <i>Ordre
-Judiciaire</i>, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(<i>multoties</i>) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-<i>Magnalia Christi Americana</i> (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that “on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities.†He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, “devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people.†Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, “lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret.†He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wünschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> that in
-burning the bodies the man’s should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-“who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare,†was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.</p>
-
-<p>For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive “together with the minutes of
-the trial;†his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master’s crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore “they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature.†This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> “Pintuel Prieur Curé†and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.</p>
-
-<p>The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire “according to common customâ€
-(“<i>so ein</i> Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten.†Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his <i>Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium</i> (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that “if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(<i>Caviller oder Feldmeister</i>).†The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. “If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby†[Jacobi Döpleri,
-<i>Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen</i>, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]</p>
-
-<p>All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediæval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: “Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live.†In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, <i>gravius</i> and <i>gravissimum</i>; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Döpler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the <i>peccatum gravissimum</i>; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.</p>
-
-<p>It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or <i>vice versa</i>
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (<i>Prax. Rer. Crim.</i> c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, “since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog†(Döpl., <i>Theat.</i>, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, “inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts.â€</p>
-
-<p>But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of “murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny,†and sentenced to be “hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (<i>a ung arbre esproné</i>).†Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but “in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother’s crime.†Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit “on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin,†the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the <i>procès verbal</i> has been preserved. (See
-<a href="#APPENDIX_M">Appendix M</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, “on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts.†The pig was condemned to be “hanged and
-executed by justice.†The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_N">Appendix N</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.</p>
-
-<p>On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having “strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife,†and
-proceeded against “as justice and reason would desire and require.â€
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified “on their oath and
-conscience†that “on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (<i>de ce siècle trépassa</i>).†The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, “We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin.†The crime was committed “on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants,†and the
-prosecution was conducted by “Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place.†The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_O">Appendix O</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff’s declaration that the pig killed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> the child and ate of its
-flesh, “although it was Friday,†and this violation of the <i>jejunium
-sextae</i>, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker’s
-offence.</p>
-
-<p>Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trochères, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place “under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells.†It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediæval courts, the chronicles of mediæval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediæval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare’s day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano’s invective against Shylock:</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“thy currish spirit</span><br />
-Govern’d a wolf, who, hang’d for human slaughter,<br />
-Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,<br />
-And, whilst thou lay’st in thy unhallow’d dam,<br />
-Infus’d itself in thee; for thy desires<br />
-Are wolfish, bloody, starv’d, and ravenous.â€</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its æsthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the “good old
-times†of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.</p>
-
-<p>The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediæval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D’Addosio, <i>Bestie
-Delinquenti</i>, pp. 23-5).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left “such beasts without a good and sure guard.†Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, “a sow with a black snout,†“for
-the cruelty and ferocity†shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having “eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant,†was condemned to be “exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis.†The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (<i>Vide</i>
-<a href="#APPENDIX_P">Appendix P</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.</p>
-
-<p>There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed “for its demerits.†Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupré near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be “executed until death
-inclusively,†for having “killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont,†who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> Boullet. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_Q">Appendix Q</a>.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.</p>
-
-<p>In 1474, the magistrates of Bâle sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake “for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg.†The <i>auto da
-fé</i> was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his <i>Kurze Basler Chronik</i>, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Prättigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bâle.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>oeuf coquatri</i> was supposed to be the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and “death-darting eye†destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled “Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l’on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,â€
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon’s egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling “a small serpent coiled.†He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like “a hoarse cock†(<i>un coq
-enroué</i>), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(<i>Mémoires de l’Académie de Sciences.</i> Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)</p>
-
-<p>A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock επτεινάÏια, a name which would
-imply some sort of winged creature. It was “sighted like the basilisk,â€
-and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal qualities.</p>
-
-<p>In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that “it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet†(Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, § 197 in Giraud:
-<i>Essai sur l’Histoire du Droit Francais</i>, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.</p>
-
-<p>Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his “appearing invisibly at times†(<i>aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens</i>), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts&mdash;snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.</p>
-
-<p>It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to “close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue.†Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L’Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, <i>pauvres enfants qu’on veut rendre orphelins</i>, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin’s
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See <a href="#APPENDIX_R">Appendix R</a>.)</p>
-
-<p><i>Lex talionis</i> is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man’s dealings
-with his fellows&mdash;the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded “life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.†An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of <i>membrum pro membro</i> the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that “whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart.†[“Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt.†Cf. Bracton, 147<i>b</i>; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God’s method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (<i>De Judiciis Divinis</i>, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: <i>impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus</i>. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.</p>
-
-<p>In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only “at the hand of man,†but also “at the hand of every
-beast;†and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that “if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten.†To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher’s meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried “unflayed.†In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (<i>Vide</i> <a href="#APPENDIX_S">Appendix S</a>.)</p>
-
-<p>In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (<i>geistlicher Convent</i>) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Türler’s <i>Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern</i> (<i>Zeitschrift für schweiz.</i> <i>Strafrecht</i>, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: “In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference <i>a bove ad hominem</i>.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> commanded that the
-‘goring ox’ should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man’s
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment.†The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.</p>
-
-<p>The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to each
-other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakôn and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikôn of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called ἄψῦχων
-δίκαι (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted before the
-Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to by
-Æschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly described
-in the <i>Onomasticon</i> of Julius Pollux and the <i>Lexicon Decem Oratorum
-Graecorum</i> of Valerius Harpokration.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>Strictly speaking, the term ἄψῦχων should be applied only to an inanimate
-object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called ἄφωνον
-(dumb); but this distinction was not always observed either in common
-parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point as formulated and
-expounded by Plato (<i>De Leg.</i>, IX. 12) was as follows: “If a draught
-animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a combat
-authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain shall
-prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the public
-lands (ἀγÏονόμοι), as many as may be commissioned by the said kinsmen,
-shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond the boundaries
-of the country (á¼Î¾Î¿Ïίζειν, exterminate in the literal and original sense
-of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive a person of life, provided
-it may not be a thunderbolt (κεÏαυνός) or other missile (βέλος) hurled by
-a god, but an object which the said person may have run against or by
-which he may have been struck and slain, then the kinsman immediate to the
-deceased shall appoint the nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify
-himself as well as his next of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit
-(τὸ ὄφλον) shall be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it
-were an animal.†In the same section it is enacted that if a person be
-found dead and the murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by
-a herald on the market-place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> forbidding the murderer to enter any
-sanctuary or the land of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he
-shall be put to death and his body be thrown unburied beyond the
-boundaries of the country of the person killed. The object of these
-measures was to appease the Erinnys or avenging spirit of the deceased,
-and to avert the calamities which would otherwise be brought upon the
-land, in accordance with the strict law of retribution demanding blood for
-blood, no matter whether it may have been shed wilfully or accidentally.
-[Cf. Æschylus, <i>Cho.</i>, 395, where this law (νόμος) is clearly and strongly
-affirmed.] The same superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage
-tribes to beg pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and
-to purify themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an
-act, the μίασμα of murder, as the Greeks called it.</p>
-
-<p>Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and “amid the loud execrations of
-the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> masses,†who seem in their excitement to have “lost their heads†as
-well as the hapless deities.</p>
-
-<p>When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.</p>
-
-<p>Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his <i>Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae</i>, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer’s dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year’s
-incarceration in the Narrenkötterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkötterlein,
-Narrenköderl or Kotter formerly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as “Menschenkäfige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Pöbels preiszugeben (zu
-narren).†Schläger: <i>Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter</i>, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were “by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death.†It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be “punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence†(<i>baodho-varsta</i>), <i>i.e.</i> by progressive mutilation, corresponding
-to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning with the loss
-of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and ending with the
-amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is wholly
-inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to “wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man.†On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.</p>
-
-<p>A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy’s approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.</p>
-
-<p>According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (<i>peâh
-hit nafre metes ne âbîte</i>), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-<i>Schwabenspiegel</i>, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. [“Man soll
-allez daz tötden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre.†§ 290.]</p>
-
-<p>Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as “severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children.†Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: “As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release.â€
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.</p>
-
-<p>The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, “according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country.†The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.</p>
-
-<p>When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also “his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,â€
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth “the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;†or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children’s teeth were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul’s sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Blücher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.</p>
-
-<p>According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked “corruption of blood†in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.</p>
-
-<p>The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: <i>Schles. Chron.</i>, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (<i>constitutio criminalis
-Carolina</i>), although in many respects an advance on mediæval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Döpler (<i>Theat. Poen.</i>, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.</p>
-
-<p>According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the “sacra saxa,†by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the <i>motio termini</i> or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.</p>
-
-<p>That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.</p>
-
-<p>For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that “the stranger
-within their gates†is their legitimate spoil, and has no other <i>raison
-d’être</i>. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.</p>
-
-<p>The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. “If a horse,†says Blackstone, “or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand.†If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands <i>pro rege</i>, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.</p>
-
-<p><i>Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda</i> is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man’s death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who “by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken.†“And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor.â€</p>
-
-<p>According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (<i>gesund</i>) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was <i>gesund</i> or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: <i>Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte</i>, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homœpathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer’s hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous <i>tarnkappe</i> of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months’ imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.</p>
-
-<p>In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes&mdash;<i>pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum</i>&mdash;but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lüneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (<i>Vide</i> Kraut’s <i>Stadtrecht
-von Lüneburg</i>, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)</p>
-
-<p>Blackstone’s theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the <i>Commentaries</i> could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were “designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death,†are equally
-incorrect.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.</p>
-
-<p>Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a <i>felo de se</i> as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of “the
-mad Ajax,†who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.</p>
-
-<p>It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.</p>
-
-<p>Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
-<p class="title">MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY</p>
-
-
-<p>A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.</p>
-
-<p>Mediæval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: <i>Si duo faciunt idem non est idem</i> (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner’s sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade’s prescription of “hempen
-caudle†and “pap of hatchet†as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.</p>
-
-<p>Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster’s features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave’s cabinet of curiosities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.</p>
-
-<p>In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: “You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk.†At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, “he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased.â€</p>
-
-<p>Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter’s wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-<i>auto da fé</i> was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.</p>
-
-<p>Döpler cites also the case of Stephen Hübner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.</p>
-
-<p>In 1573, the parliament of Dôle published a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comté to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; “notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase,†the people were empowered to “assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty.†The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children “even on Friday.†The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a <i>jour maigre</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas à Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.</p>
-
-<p>When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter’s, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body “as a pestilential thingâ€
-(<i>uti quoddam mephiticum</i>) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>From the standpoint of ancient and mediæval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediæval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homœopenal principle of <i>similia similibus
-puniantur</i>, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.</p>
-
-<p>Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Büchner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillée, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If “privation of mind†and “irresistible force,†says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then “partial vitiation of mind†and “semi-irresistible
-force†are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. “Partial vitiation of mind†is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a “semi-irresistible force.†But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-“absolute privation of mind†and “wholly irresistible force;†and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.</p>
-
-<p>The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.</p>
-
-<p>Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediæval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.</p>
-
-<p>But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category “all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity,†and “all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired.â€
-In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.</p>
-
-<p>A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of “moral insanity†in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as “moral
-insanity†exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.</p>
-
-<p>Mediæval penal justice sought to inflict the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger’s daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-“Malefiz-Gericht†or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,â€</p>
-
-<p>was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: “I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order.†A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.</p>
-
-<p>Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called “Blue Laws†of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own “stubborn<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> and rebellious sons,†or upon persons who “worship
-any other God but the Lord God,†had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.</p>
-
-<p>If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediæval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.</p>
-
-<p>A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.</p>
-
-<p>This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a “kind of
-menagerieâ€; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-“there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed.†In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.</p>
-
-<p>Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the æsthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.</p>
-
-<p>It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: “Have ye a government here?†and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, “Then I’m agin’ it.†Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine’s definition of man as “an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb,†applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.</p>
-
-<p>The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palæolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.</p>
-
-<p>In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta’s brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men’s hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.</p>
-
-<p>Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the <i>argumentum ad hominem</i> in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the “Hottentot Venus,†examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.</p>
-
-<p>“The more advanced criminalists,†says Professor Von Kirchenheim, “are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles.†In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years’ imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediæval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: <i>Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur</i>. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo’s metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.</p>
-
-<p>Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-“education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts,†and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to “deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (<i>récidivistes</i>) together with their posterity,†and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.</p>
-
-<p>Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the <i>force majeure</i>
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man’s character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man’s
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.</p>
-
-<p>As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediæval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediæval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man’s will upon another man’s mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God’s special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.</p>
-
-<p>One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,&mdash;some
-point at which we are forced to say,&mdash;</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“O, that way madness lies; let me shun that.â€</p>
-
-<p>It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.</p>
-
-<p>A madman, says Coleridge, is one who “mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things.†But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who “of imagination all compact,†takes his fancies for
-realities,</p>
-
-<p class="poem">“Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A local habitation and a name.â€</span></p>
-
-<p>Coleridge’s definition includes also the mythopœic faculty, the power
-of projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.</p>
-
-<p>An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediæval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-“an effect,†says Morselli, “of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples.†What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.</p>
-
-<p>An additional reflection, that “must give us pause†in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.</p>
-
-<p>Mediæval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.</p>
-
-<p>It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man’s free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> of a deity “willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known,†no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions&mdash;the original sin of the theologians&mdash;and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the “election of grace†is by no means identical with salvation
-through the “survival of the fittest.†The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as “the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory,†may be and probably is “as filthy ragsâ€; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. “The best man,â€
-said Socrates, “is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself.†This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.</p>
-
-<p>Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (<i>Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology.</i> New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zoöpsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of “showing off†play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls “that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob.†It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.</p>
-
-<p>If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediæval courts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zoöpsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.</p>
-
-<p>Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted <i>quia
-peccatum est</i> or <i>ne peccetur</i>; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as “ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them.†Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.</p>
-
-<p>The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 6em;">“the native hue of resolution</span><br />
-Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.â€</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.</p>
-
-<p>Schopenhauer maintained the theory of “responsibility for character,†and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person’s character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-“dives†haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.</p>
-
-<p>A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the <i>causes célèbres</i> of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in <i>The Nation</i> for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel <i>Le Comte de Monte Christo</i>, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.</p>
-
-<p>In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in “<i>l’espèce de volupté qu’elle
-éprouverait à commettre un crime</i>,†or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called “pure cussedness.†Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.</p>
-
-<p>Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours’ deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of “Guilty, with extenuating circumstances,†as the
-result of which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> the accused was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.</p>
-
-<p>After fifteen years’ imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer’s ethics, that “a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character,†what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal’s individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> material
-which her profession placed in her hands?</p>
-
-<p>However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as “much delight†as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals “shrieking and
-groaning†on his tormentatore. “The physiologist,†says Claude Bernard,
-“is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover.†Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.</p>
-
-<p>The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that “there’s
-method in it,†is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.</p>
-
-<p>According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has “such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong.†This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no “defect of reason†nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> “disease of mind†in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater “defect of reason†in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-“certifiably insane†persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-<i>Salus socialis suprema lex esto.</i> Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.</p>
-
-<p>The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.</p>
-
-<p>If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> partially
-insane, especially those affected with “moral insanity†or so-called
-“cranks,†have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.</p>
-
-<p>From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso’s assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (<i>grafomani
-matteschi</i>) like Passannante and Guiteau (<i>Archivio di Psichiatria.</i>
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.</p>
-
-<p>That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-<i>cujus pœnæ metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt</i>. He records also that
-in riding from Cologne towards Düren, he and his companions saw in the
-vast forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two
-thieves, as a warning to the rest of the pack: “Et nos ab Agrippina
-Colonia Duram versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos
-caligatos lupos non secus quam duos latrones, furcæ suspensos; <i>quo
-similis pœnæ formidine a maleficio reliqui deterreantur</i>.†In like
-manner the American farmer sets up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the
-protection of his hens. We may add that Rosarius entertained a high
-opinion of the intelligence and moral character of animals and wrote a
-book to prove their frequent superiority to men in the use of their
-rational faculties. This very clever and original work entitled: <i>Quod
-animalia bruta sæpe ratione utantur melius homine</i>, was first published by
-Gabriel Naudé at Paris in 1648; an enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at
-Helmstedt in 1728, with a dissertation on the soul in animals.</p>
-
-<p>In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> in his treatise <i>On the
-Diatetics of the Soul</i>, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his <i>Hygiène de l’esprit</i>, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe’s
-<i>Werther</i>. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> <i>Les Deux Frères</i>, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris <i>Petit Journal</i>, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurélien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military <i>attaché</i> shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper <i>Le Vigilant</i>, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles’ department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysées, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-<i>Libre Patrole</i>, which published lies about his confession, as <i>Le
-Vigilant</i> did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang’s story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.</p>
-
-<p>That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.</p>
-
-<p>The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender’s mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediæval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="APPENDIX" id="APPENDIX"></a>APPENDIX</h2>
-
-<p class="title">CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_A" id="APPENDIX_A"></a>A</p>
-<p class="center">TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM</p>
-
-<p>Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">ORDINATIO</p>
-
-<p>Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente <i>Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio</i> signatum <i>Franciscus Faeti</i> contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (<i>sic</i>) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata <i>Romaneti</i> qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI<br />EPISCOPATUS MAURIANÆ</p>
-
-<p>Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani cæterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et cætera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinæ potentiæ virtute præcibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinæ
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.</p>
-
-<p>Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum præcedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-cæterasque formalitates ad hæc opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinæ clementiæ et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Fran. Faeti</span></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R<sup>di</sup> generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Romanet</span></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p>Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.</p>
-
-<p>Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (<i>sic</i>) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... <i>Deus
-Deus qui contritorum</i> et <i>A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis</i> etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis <i>Qui
-contritorum</i> et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-<i>Veni Creator Spiritus</i> quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto <i>Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur</i> etc. cum orationibus <i>Deus qui corda
-fidelium</i> singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.</p>
-
-<p>Franciscus de Crosa Vic.<sup>s</sup> et Off.<sup>s</sup> gen.<sup>lis</sup> Maurianne.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Faure</span></span></p>
-
-<p>Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.</p>
-
-<p class="center">(<i>locus sigilli.</i>)</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam <i>Rembaud</i> producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-<i>Approbando</i> etc. signatam <i>Rembaud</i> dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">COPIA CEDULE</p>
-
-<p>Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam <i>Claudius Morellus</i>
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span> reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quæ impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciæ <i>cap. primo</i> et ibi Gr. <i>De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib.</i> 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-<i>Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram</i>
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi <i>Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo</i> quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturæ primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturæ vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus <i>actus activorum non operantur in patienti</i> ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia § <i>Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili.</i> ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturæ dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi <i>Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium</i> non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et æquitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur <i>Qui seminat metet</i> ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. <i>In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum</i> non tamen cequitur (<i>sic</i>) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quæ sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et pœnitentiam agat
-exemplo Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter
-pœnitentiam egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3.
-veniat populus et imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua
-sancta gratia et per merita sanctissimæ passionis excessum dictorum
-Animalium compessere et<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e
-vineis ejicient et non eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis
-consideratis evidentissime patet dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis
-ejicienda non esse attento quod solo instinctu naturæ vivunt et ita per
-egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri
-instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum monitorium requisitum in quantum
-concernit dicta Animalia revocari et annullari nec aliquo modo
-consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis concedatur nec etiam aliqui
-visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per Agentes in eorum supplicatione
-protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni meliori modo via jure ac forma
-salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac deffentionibus competentibus aut
-competituris humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Petrus Rembaudus</span></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem <i>Etiam si cuncta</i> et signatam
-<i>Franciscus Fay</i> dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.</p>
-
-<p>Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulæ cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.</p>
-
-<p>Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam <i>Fay</i> dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">COPIA CEDULÆ</p>
-
-<p>Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in <span class="smcaplc">I.</span>
-par. q. 26. ar. <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut cœteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in
-æquitate et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum
-creaturarum habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa
-bruta animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.</p>
-
-<p>Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Franc Faeti</span></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem <i>Licet multis</i>
-signatam <i>Rembaudi</i> dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">COPIA CEDULÆ</p>
-
-<p>Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut cæteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et præsertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturæ
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (<i>sic</i>) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> dist. <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata <i>Fran: Faeti.</i> nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulæ parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: <i>P. Rembaudus.</i> ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suœ cedule et fieri recuisitis inhœrendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">P. Rembaudus</span></span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum <i>Prunier</i> adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiæ vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariæ et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.</p>
-
-<p>Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.</p>
-
-<p>Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN</p>
-
-<p>Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.</p>
-
-<p>Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Françys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> conseil general suyvant la publication d’icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu’il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantité a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.</p>
-
-<p><span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">L. Prumier</span></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 5em;"><i>curial</i></span></p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">ALIA CONTINUATIO</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">MEMORIALE AD JUS</p>
-
-<p>Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA</p>
-
-<p class="center"><i>contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis Supplicata</i></p>
-
-<p>Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori&mdash;cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente <i>Ut appareat</i>
-etc. signata <i>Claudius Morellus</i>&mdash;tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium&mdash;tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati <i>Daprilis</i>&mdash;ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni&mdash;testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis <i>Daprili</i>&mdash;cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente <i>Visitatio</i> et signata <i>Claudius
-Morellus</i>&mdash;allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente <i>Etsi
-rationes</i> etc. signata <i>Petrus de Collo</i>&mdash;tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis&mdash;memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587&mdash;ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis&mdash;supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata <i>Franciscus Faeti</i>&mdash;litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis&mdash;attestatione signata
-<i>Romanet</i> sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii&mdash;cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente <i>Approbando</i> etc. signata <i>Petrus
-Rembaudus</i>&mdash;allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata <i>Franciscus
-Faeti</i> incipiente <i>Etiam si cuncta</i> etc.&mdash;allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente <i>Licet multis</i> etc. signata <i>Petrus
-Rembaudus</i>&mdash;memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi&mdash;testimonialibus signatis <i>Prunier</i> sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium&mdash;memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi&mdash;ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum super statu loci oblati p....<br />
-quem locum....<br />
-visitandum....<br />
-mensem ut f....<br />
-et nobis rem....<br />
-fuerit provid....<br />
-Mermetus vis....<br />
-generalis....<br />
-in civitate S....<br />
-die decima....<br />
-anno domini....<br />
-octuagesimo sep....<br />
-Petremandi Bertr....<br />
-dictorum Scind....<br />
-et egregii....<br />
-dictorum Animal.<br />
-ordinationem....<br />
-acceptandum....<br />
-facit die et....</p>
-
-<p>(pro visitatione III flor)</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>locus sigilli.</i></p>
-
-<p>Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.</p>
-
-<p>Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor&mdash;20 decembre 1587.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>Published by Léon Ménebréa in the appendix to his treatise: <i>De l’Origine,
-de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-âge contre les
-Animaux</i>, Chambery, 1846. Cf. <i>Mémoires de la Société Royale Académique de
-Savoie</i>, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.</p>
-
-<hr style="width: 25%;" />
-
-<p>According to M. J. Desnoyers (<i>Recherches sur la coutume d’exorciser et
-d’excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles à l’agriculture</i>,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.</p>
-
-<p>The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d’Eynatten, in
-his <i>Manuale Exorcismorum</i>, is as follows:&mdash;“Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem ✠, et per Jesum Christum
-✠ filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum ✠ ab utroque
-procedentem, ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis,
-aquis, si Dei providentia adhùc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis
-habitetis, sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis
-nocere poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhùc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.&mdash;Amen.†<i>Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae</i>, 1626, p. 1204.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_B" id="APPENDIX_B"></a>B</p>
-<p class="center">II<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a></p>
-<p class="center">DE L’EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES</p>
-<p class="center">PAR GASPARD BAILLY</p>
-
-<p>Il ne favt pas mépriser les Monitoires, veu que c’est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l’Eglise se sert, qui est l’Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n’épargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s’attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont fréquens,
-pour preuue de cette verité. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu’on a
-excommunié les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeïssans aux commandemens de l’Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonné par la sentence de l’Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur procès. Au Siecle passé, il y auoit telle quantité
-d’Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu’elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent à l’Euesque pour
-les<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> Excommunier, ce qu’ayant esté fait, le Lac fut deliuré de ces
-animaux.</p>
-
-<p>Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantité de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu’elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantoüan, si on n’y eût apporté du secours par
-l’Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblémes, sous
-l’intitulation <i>nihil reliqui</i>.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,</i><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Locustæ vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.</i></span><br />
-<i>Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;</i><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Qualia non Athilæ, Castrave Cersis erant.</i></span><br />
-<i>Hæ fænum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;</i><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super.</i></span></p>
-
-<p>On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu’il se leua vne si grande quantité
-de Mouches, d’vne Eglise qu’on auoit basti à Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu’elles faisoient, elles empéchoient à ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu’elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paué de l’Eglise.</p>
-
-<p>Nous lisons qu’en l’année 1541, il y eut vne telle quantité de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d’vne nuëé; qu’ayant mangé les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d’vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l’Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.</p>
-
-<p>On dit aussi qu’en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantité de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu’ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d’vne coudée d’auteur, et tellement épaisses qu’en volant
-elles leuoient la veüe de la clarté du Soleil, ces animaux<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> firent un
-dégat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chassés par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.</p>
-
-<p>Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cité de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu’en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantité de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu’ayans mangé tous les fruits, feüiles, et écorces des arbres iusques à
-la racine, elles s’éleuerent comme vne nuëe; et tombées en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu’en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.</p>
-
-<p>Du temps de Lotaire troisième Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, blé, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans esté jettés à la Mer; il s’ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l’Air, que la peste rauageât grande quantité de monde en ce pays là. Voilà
-quantité d’exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur procés
-afin de s’en garantir par le moyen de la malédiction que leur donne
-l’Eglise.</p>
-
-<p>Premièrement, sur la Requeste presentée par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le dégat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportée, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur à ses bestioles pour se présenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et là deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, où
-elles estoient, et les raisons veuës et considerées, d’vne part et d’autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><i>Requeste des Habitans</i></p>
-
-<p>Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantité
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-blés, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel dégat aux blés,
-et raisins qu’ils n’y laissent rien, d’où les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommée par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.</p>
-
-<p>Qui les fait recourir à la Bonté, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, à ce
-qu’il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu’il a pleu à Dieu d’enuoyer pour l’entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Plaidoyer des Habitans</i></p>
-
-<p>Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont à genouy les larmes à l’œil,
-recourent à votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aués des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessité de laquelle ils
-sont menacés, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n’épargnent ny
-blé, ny vignes; rauage semblable à celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoyé par Themis à Thebes, qui<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> n’épargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous sçauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aués trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint à s’abandonner à des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, <i>nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla æequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus</i>: Témoins les Meres
-dont il est parlé au quatrième des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l’une de l’autre. <i>Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur.</i> La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu’elle est pleine
-de langueurs, débilités et foiblesses de cœur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,<br />
-At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longè est.</i></p>
-
-<p>Et Auian Marcellin dit, <i>Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire</i>. Ie crois que vous aurés compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l’estat qu’il serait reduit si la faim
-l’accabloit.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,<br />
-Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.<br />
-Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.<br />
-Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;<br />
-Ventus erat, pro ventre locus.</i></p>
-
-<p>Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d’habits dechirés, et des visages affamés, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitié et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iousë, et en cét estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>Les Informations et visites qui ont esté faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du dégat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalités requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d’adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de fairé reflection, et à cét effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnées en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnées par nostre Mere Sainte
-l’Eglise, à quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Plaidoyer pour les Insectes</i></p>
-
-<p>Messievrs, dépuis que vous m’aués choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalités, qu’on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m’étonnant fort
-de la façon qu’on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du dégat qu’on
-pretend qu’elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on sçait qu’elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer à ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu’elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberté de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.</p>
-
-<p>Qve l’adiovrnement laxé contr’elles est nul comme laxé contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu’on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> priués
-de cette lumiere qui a esté donnée au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tiré de la
-Loi premieree, <i>ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat</i>; et voyci les
-mots. <i>Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret.</i></p>
-
-<p>La seconde raison est, que l’on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu’vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portée sous le tiltre des instituts <i>de pœn. tem.
-litig.</i> Mais ces animaux ne sont obligés par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-façon, <i>non tenentur enim ex contractu</i>, estans incapables de contracter,
-<i>neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto</i>, moins
-<i>ex delicto, seu quasi</i>; parce que comme il a esté dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priués de son vsage.</p>
-
-<p>De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal à propos, <i>Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra</i>. Je
-laisse à penser quest-ce qu’on pretend de faire ayant adjourné ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuées de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l’adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister <i>cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quæ
-consequuntur locum habent</i>.</p>
-
-<p>On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu’il est vray lors qu’il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, <i>In administratione suæ
-iurisdictionis</i>, mais non pas en ce cas, où la partie n’en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est décidé par la glose
-de la Loy 2 <i>ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent</i>, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite à propos L’axiaume qui dit <i>quod directè fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus</i>. Mais ce que je treuue
-plus estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d’Excommunication, d’Anathema et malediction, et à quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l’Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne châtie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peché, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d’auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu’il faut suiure, et ce qu’il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberté de prendre l’vn et laisser l’autre.</p>
-
-<p>On vovdra peut-estre dire qu’elles ont manqué en ce qu’elles ne se sont
-presentées ayant esté adjurnées, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-à cause de leur desobeïssance: Mais à cela on respond qu’il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n’y a point d’adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-<i>quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitimè citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo</i>, etc.</p>
-
-<p>De plus, si on prend garde à la définition de l’Excommunication, on verra
-qu’on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l’Excommunication est dite <i>extra<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> Ecclesiam positio, vel è qualibet
-communione, vel è quolibet legitimo actu separatio</i>. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechassés de l’Eglise, n’y ayans jamais esté,
-d’autant qu’elle est pour les hommes qui ont l’ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doüées d’aucune raison, et l’Apostre S. Paul
-<i>ad Corinth.</i> 5 dit <i>quòd de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus</i>, l’Excommunication
-<i>afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est</i>, cap. 1, <i>de sentent. Excomm. in</i> 6. C’est pourquoy l’ame de ces
-animaux, n’estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchée par telle
-Sentence, <i>quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis</i>.</p>
-
-<p>L’autre raison est, <i>quòd facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licét consecutiuum sit repugnans statui</i> suo cap. <i>de
-occidendis</i> 23 q. 5 cap. <i>sicut dignum extra de homicid</i>. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-<i>fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum</i>. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont esté faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d’en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Cicéron dit
-au premier des Offices <i>principio generi omnium animantium est à natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant</i>. Par ces raison on voit qu’ils n’ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, <i>cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quòd secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minùs erit licitum homini</i>, veu qu’on lit dans l’Epistre de S. Iude, <i>cum
-altercaretur Michaël cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere</i> Cap. <i>Si igitur Michaël</i>, 23. <i>q.</i> 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. <i>q.</i> 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s’est peché de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considérans en eux mesmes, <i>est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous féra
-donner les mains, et persuadera à vostre Esprit, qu’on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d’Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononçant telle Sentence s’est s’en pendre à Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs péchés, <i>immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant</i>, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge <i>omnis Caro corrupit viam suam</i>. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissée, exilée, et
-reduite en tel estat qu’elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Protinus irrupit venæ prioris in æuum,<br />
-Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verùmque fidésque,<br />
-In quorum subiere locum, fraudésque, dolùsque.<br />
-Insidiæque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,<br />
-Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,<br />
-Non socer à genero, fratrum quoquè gratia rara est,<br />
-Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti<br />
-Liuida terribiles miscent aconitæ nouercæ<br />
-Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,<br />
-Uita iacet pietas, et virgo cæde madentes.<br />
-Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit.</i></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span>Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Procès, à quoy on
-conclud.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Replique des Habitans</i></p>
-
-<p>Le principal motif qu’on a rapporté pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu’estans priués de l’vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis à aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre <i>cum mulier</i> 1. 5. q. l. la <i>l. congruit
-in fin</i>. et la Loix suiuante. <i>ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis.</i> Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se présente maintenant à juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d’vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d’empescher
-qu’ils n’en commettent par cy-après, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-à vn crime commis, et permis afin d’empescher <i>ne crimen committatur</i>.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy <i>congruit</i> sus cité, où il est dit qu’on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insensé du crime qu’il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu’il ne scait ce qu’il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu’il n’offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cét Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l’authorité du Chapitre <i>omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss.</i> ou il est dit qu’on peut
-deceller ce qu’on a pris si on ne la pas executé, afin d’y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmée par la glose <i>in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal.</i> qui dit qui si quelqu’vn s’accuse d’auoir Fiancé une fille,
-par parolles de présent; on pourra deceller ce qui a esté dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu’ayant espousé telle fille, si on nie
-de l’auoir fait, et on refuse d’accomplir le Mariage, <i>Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur</i>. Il este loisible de publier ce<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> qu’on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu’on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l’adjournement est valable, d’autant qu’il est fait
-afin qu’ils ne rapportent du dommage d’ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu’ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre à ce
-qu’on a aduancé à sçauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommuniés,
-Anathematisés, maudis ny execrés; à cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donné à l’Eglise, l’ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l’Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, <i>omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quæ
-mouentur in aquis</i>, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s’il y a chose où elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c’est à la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; à sçauoir de l’Homme,
-qu’il a fait à son Image et semblance, <i>faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram</i> et luy a donné le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crées <i>crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus cœli, et omnibus animantibus Cœli</i>; Aussi Pline en son
-Liure premier de l’Histoire naturelle dit <i>quod causâ hominis, videtur
-cuncta alia genuisse natura</i>. Les Jurisconsultes sont d’accord, <i>quod
-hominis gratia, omnes fructus à natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de
-vsur. et §. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis.</i> et Ouide descriuant
-l’excellence de l’Homme parle de la sorte,</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Pronaque, cum spectent animalia cæetera terras<br />
-Os homini sublime dedit, cælumque tueri<br />
-Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.</i></p>
-
-<p>et vn autre Poëte,</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><i>Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus<br />
-Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.<br />
-Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,<br />
-Segnem, atque obscænam, passuri strauisset in aluum.</i></p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l’Homme dit <i>hominem tantœ excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimodè, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo verò, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quàm in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aër, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturœ suœ, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos
-videmus, hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc
-Terra, et Elementa, huic bruta præesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat
-cælum, hinc salutem bonumque procurant Angelicœ mentes</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Et se seroit vne chose, si j’ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priué, et que de chétifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, à l’exclusion de l’Homme pour qui ils sont
-destinés de Dieu. C’est sur ce sujet qu’il dit <i>Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodò posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Et pour responce à ce qu’escrit S. Thomas qu’il n’est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu’en l’espece
-qu’on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et détruisans les fruits qui
-seruent à son soutient, et nourriture.</p>
-
-<p>Mais à quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu’on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantité de saints Personnages, ont Excommunié des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d’en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> continuellement, à
-sçauoir dans la ville d’Aix, où S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantité à cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d’Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu’vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arresté, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu’vn est piqué hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu’on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse à part quantité de passages de l’Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donné des maledictions aux choses inanimées, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu’on pourra voir au <i>Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2.</i> il maudit le Serpent <i>Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terræ</i>.</p>
-
-<p>De dire, qu’excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s’est s’en prendre
-à Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n’est pas s’ens prendre à Dieu que de recourir à l’Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu’il a pleu à sa Diuine Majesté de
-nous enuoyer, à cause de nos fautes et pechés; au contraire c’est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir à elle, lors q’on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal</i></p>
-
-<p>Les defenses rapportées par l’Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu’on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d’Excommunication à la volée, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
-agissant, que s’il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cét Aduocat est appuyé sur la règle de
-Droict, qui dit, <i>qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, pœnam non meretur</i>,
-et vrayement c’est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d’impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines à l’égal des offences, sans auoir égard à personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, <i>quàm abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viæ ejus</i>. C’est vne Mer profonde d’ont on ne peut
-découurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoyé ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient à leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.</p>
-
-<p>Ceux qui donnent l’aumosne sont toûjours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit <i>non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri</i>, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l’aumône aux pauures, <i>si non pauisti necasti, pascendò seruare
-poteras</i>, de mesmes la Loy <i>de lib. agnoscend.</i> repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens à ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinée à ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, <i>qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vità viuet</i>; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusèbe expliche de la sorte, <i>fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium</i>.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>C’est vn acte de Charité, que d’assister le pauures, <i>frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri</i>, dit Iosuë c. 38. aussi la
-récompense est asseurée, ainsi qu’escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. <i>venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum à constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis</i>.
-C’est vne œuure de Misericorde d’auuoir compassion de son prochain,
-ainsi que dit S. Ambroise <i>lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiæ,
-vt compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum
-possumus iuvemus, et plus interdum quàm possumus</i> l’Hospitalité est
-recommandée par S. Paul <i>hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim
-placuerunt quidam, Angelis hospitio receptis</i>, et S. Augustin <i>disce
-Christiane sine discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne fortè cui domum
-clauseris, cui humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus</i>. L’ordinaire
-recompence qui suit l’aumosne est le centuple, <i>honora Dominum de tua
-substantia, et de primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et
-implebuntur horrea tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt</i>. Les
-abismes de la Diuinité ne s’épuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage
-Salomon, <i>fæneratur Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam
-reddet</i>. S. Paul aux Corinthièns Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, <i>qui
-administrat semen seminanti, et panem ad manducandum præstabit, et
-multiplicabit semen suum</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Seroit-ce point à cause des irreuerences qu’on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun égard à la presence de Dieu, <i>conduntur
-stupra, tractantur<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentiùs deniquè;
-in ædituorum cellulis quòd in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur</i>, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c’est là bien souuent où se
-donne le mot, où se prennent les assignations, où se lancent les
-meschantes œilliades, <i>Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius</i>,
-dit S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en Ægypte,
-le péché était consacré à Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu’on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peché ressemble au cœur,
-et la feuille à la langue, inférant de là que ceux qui allaient aux
-Temples, deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.</p>
-
-<p>Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu’on assistât au culte Diuin par maniere
-d’aquit: Mais qu’en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entièrement sa
-pensée, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d’actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu’on entendit parmy les
-Ruës aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l’on se tue,
-laissant toute autre œuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.</p>
-
-<p>Que si les Payens ont esté si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinités, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.</p>
-
-<p>Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n’y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s’il enuoit quelques aduersités aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouët:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> C’est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent détourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et pechés.</p>
-
-<p>Nous voyons ces habitans la larme à l’œil, qui demandent pardon d’vn
-cœur contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le
-passé, et employent l’assistance de l’Eglise pour les soulager en leurs
-nécessités, et détourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans
-menacés d’vne famine insuportable si vous ne prenés leur droit, et cause
-en protection, et faire déloger ces animaux, qui les menaçent d’vne ruine
-totale, à quoy nous n’empeschons.</p>
-
-<p>Concluans à cét effect, qu’il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d’execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d’ores en auant ils n’apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, à ce conuenables et accoustumées.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>La Sentence du Iuge d’Eglise</i></p>
-
-<p>In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci à certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, à territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visâ certâ informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.</p>
-
-<p>Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordiâ, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.</p>
-
-<p>In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub
-pœnis Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infrà sex dies, à
-Monitione in vim sententiae huius, à vineis, et territoriis huius loci
-discedant, nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod
-si infrà praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districtè praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradûs, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt faciliùs ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenùs bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulò abstineant.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_C" id="APPENDIX_C"></a>C</p>
-
-<p>Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">KLAG</p>
-
-<p>Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmäuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schädliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schädliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben könnten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wüssten zu
-ernehren.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">ANTWORT</p>
-
-<p>Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-männiglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewöhr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei&mdash;&mdash;: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewöhr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen müssten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten mögen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-wäre, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fürbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen möge.</p>
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center">URTEL</p>
-
-<p>Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was für Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schädlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmäuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmäder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger wär, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen möchte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen mögen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.</p>
-
-<p><i>Vide</i> Hormayr’s <i>Taschenbuch für die vaterländische Geschichte</i>. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_D" id="APPENDIX_D"></a>D</p>
-
-<p>Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.</p>
-
-<p>Du vnvernünfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernüfftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ sömlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshäch/ so hat mir mein gnädiger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erlösers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. nächsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gärten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Bäumen/ Krüteren/ vnd von allen örteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd stätteuch fügend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen mögen an den früchten vnd nahrungen der Menschen<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfüllen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fürsprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnädigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnädiger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fürer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verflüchen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebürt/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begären von ewerem jeglichen zu
-bätten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerüffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.</p>
-
-<p>Job. Heinrich Hottinger: <i>Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti</i> iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling’s <i>Chronica</i>, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_E" id="APPENDIX_E"></a>E</p>
-
-<p>Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.</p>
-
-<p>Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfürst.&mdash;Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-würdige, Unser lieber andächtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner nächst getanen Predigt, über die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhörlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und ärgerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und männiglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.</p>
-
-<p>Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhörer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevögel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,&mdash;dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden möge nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil&mdash;ist demnach<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> unser gnädiges Begehren&mdash;zu eröffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behändigkeit und Wege, du für gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-tägliche und unaufhörliche Unkeuschheit unzählich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-ärgerliche Vöglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkümmert werden möge.... Das gereicht zur Beförderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnädige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.&mdash;Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.</p>
-
-<p><i>Vide</i> Hormayr’s <i>Taschenbuch, etc.</i>, 1845, pp. 227-8.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_F" id="APPENDIX_F"></a>F</p>
-
-<p>Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a></p>
-
-<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="table">
-<tr><td class="btr" align="center">Sources of Information</td>
- <td class="btr" align="center">Dates</td>
- <td class="btr" align="center">Animals</td>
- <td class="bt" align="center">Places</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="btr" valign="top">Annales Ecclesiastici Francorum</td>
- <td class="btr" align="center" valign="top">824</td>
- <td class="btr" align="center" valign="top">Moles</td>
- <td class="bt" align="center" valign="top">Valley of Aosta</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Muratori: Rer. Ital. Scriptores, iii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">886</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Roman Campagna</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Gaspard Bailly: Traité des Monitoires</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">9th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Serpents</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Aix-les-Bains</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, p. 97, Mémoires<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">France, viii, p. 427</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1120</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Field-mice<br />and<br />Caterpillars</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Laon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top" rowspan="3">Théophile Raynaud: De Monitoriis in Opusc.<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. Mémoires, cit.,</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 415. Note, Vita S. Bernhardi, i, No.</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">58. Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1121</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Flies</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Foigny near Laon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1121</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Horseflies</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Mayence</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span>Malleolus: De Exorcismis</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1225</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Eels</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lausanne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">L’Abbé Leboeuf: Hist. de Paris, ix, p. 400.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 427</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1266</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Fontenay-aux-Roses<br />near Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres Thémis, viii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1314</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Bull</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Moiey-le-Temple</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1320</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cockchafers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Avignon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Carpentier to Du Cange, <i>vide</i> Homicida</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1322</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Not Specified</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span>
- <br />Both cited by Von Amira, p. 552</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1323</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte, ii,<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 544; also Germania, iv, p. 383. Von</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Amira, p. 561</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1338</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Kaltern</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Delisle: Etudes sur la condition de la classe<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">agricole, p. 107. Von Amira, p. 552</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1356</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Caen</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>Carpentier to Du Cange. <i>Vide</i> homicida. Von<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Amira, p. 552</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1378</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Garnier: Revue des Sociétés Savantes, Dec.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">1866, pp. 476, <i>sqq.</i> From the archives of</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Côte-d’Or</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1379</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Three sows<br />and a pig.<br />Rest of the<br />two herds<br />pardoned</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Saint-Marcel<br />les-Jussey</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Charange: Dict. des Titres Originaux, ii, p.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">72. <i>Also</i> statistique de Falaise, i, p. 63.</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 427</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1386</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Falaise</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Auranton: Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1389</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Horse</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dijon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Berriat-Saint-Prix in Mémoires, cit., viii, p.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">427. From MSS. in la Bibliothèque du Roi</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1394</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Mortaing</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Malleolus: De Exorcismis, Tract. ii,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 411</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">14th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Spanish flies</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Mayence</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>MS. of Judge Hérisson, published by<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lejeune in Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 433;</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>also</i> Loriol: La France Eure et Loire,</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 108</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1403</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Meulan</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Auranton: Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1404</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Rouvre</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">MS. Bibliothèque du Roi Mémoires, cit.,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 427</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1405</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Ox</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Gisors</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">MS. Bibliothèque du Roi Mémoires, cit.,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 428</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1408</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Pont-de-l’Arche</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: Histoire d’Abbeville</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1414</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1418</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Auranton: Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1419</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Labergement-le-Duc</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1420</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Brochon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1435</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Trochères</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Malleolus: De Exorcismis, Mémoires, cit.,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 423</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1451</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats and<br />Bloodsuckers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Berne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>Garnier: Revue des Sociétés Savantes, iv,<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 476 <i>sqq.</i> Dec. 1866</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1452</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sixteen cows<br />and one goat</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Rouvre</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Gui-Pape: Decisiones Thémis, i, p. 196</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1456</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Bourgogne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Mémoires, cit., viii, pp. 441-445. From<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Archives of Monjeu and Dependencies</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1457</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Savigny-sur-Etang,<br />Bourgogne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Desnoyers: Recherches etc.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1460-1</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dijon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">A. Duboys: Justice et Bourreau à Amiens</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1463</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Two pigs</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Amiens</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Sauval: Histoire de Paris, iii, p. 387.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 428</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1466</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Corbeil</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1470</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Amiens</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Promenades pittoresques dans l’Evêché de<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bâle. Journal du Départment du Nord,</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nov. 1, 1813. Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 428.</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Johann Gross: Kleine Baseler Chronik.</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1474</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cock</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Bâle</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>Schilling: Chronica (Zurich MS.),<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hottinger: Hist. Eccles. Pars iv, pp.</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">317-321</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1478</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Inger<br />(sort of<br />weevil)</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Berne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du Pays de Vaud</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1479<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Inger</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">"</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Hist. de Nismes. Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 428</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1479</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats and<br />Moles</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Nîmes</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: Hist. d’Abbeville</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1479</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chasseneus: Consilia von Amira, p. 561</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1481</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Caterpillars</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Macon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Victor Hugo: Nôtre Dame de Paris</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1482</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Goat</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chasseneus: Consilia. Mémoires, cit., viii,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 416</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1487</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Snails</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Macon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1488</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Autun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1488</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Beaujeu</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: Hist. d’Abbeville</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1490</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>Annuaire de l’Aisne 1812, p. 88. Mémoires,<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">cit., viii, p. 428, 446</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1494</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Clermont-les-Moncornet</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Saint-Edme: Dict. de la Penalité, sub verb.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Animaux</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1497</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Charonne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Voyage Littéraire de deux Bénédictins<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Durand et Martenne), 1717, ii, p. 166-7</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1499</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Bull</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Beauvais</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Archives de l’Abbaye de Josaphat.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 434-5</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1499</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Sèves near Chartres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 434</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">15th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dunois</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Malleolus: De Exorcismis</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Caterpillars</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Coire</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Worms</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Constance</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Beetles</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Coire</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: L’Épopée des Animaux</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1500</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Flies</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Mayence</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chasseneus: Consilia</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1500</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Snails</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lyon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>Chasseneus: Consilia</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1500-1530</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin<br />(Rats, etc.)</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Autun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Mémoires et Documents, publ. par la Soc.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">de la Suisse Romande, vii, No. 97, pp.</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">675-677</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1509</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lausanne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1510</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dijon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or. Mémoires, cit.,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 447</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1512</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Arcenaux</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Mathieu: Hist. des Évêques de Langres, p.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">188</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1512-13</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats and<br />Insects</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Langres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Groslée: Ephémérides, 1811, ii, p. 153, 168.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Cf.</i> Théophile Raynaud: Opusc, 1665, p.</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">482. Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 413, 418, 424</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1516<br />(1506<br />according<br />to some<br />authorities)</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Troyes in Champagne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Habasque: Not. hist. sur le Litoral des<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Côtes-du-Nord, p. 89</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1516</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Tréguier</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, pp. 946-48</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1519</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Field-mice</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Glurns (Stelvio)</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>Saint-Edme: Dict. de la Penalité. <i>Cf.</i><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chasseneus</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1522<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Autun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Vernet in Thémis ou Bibliothèque des<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Jurisconsulte, viii</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1525</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Toulouse</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Papon and Boesius: Decisiones. <i>Cf.</i> Thémis,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1528</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Not specified</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Bordeaux</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1528</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">"<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ménebréa: Jugements rendus contre les<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Animaux, p. 505. From Grenier:</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Documents relatifs à l’hist. du pays de</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Vaud.</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1536</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lutry (on Lake Leman)</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1540</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Bitch</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Meaux</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Annuaire de la Côte-d’Or</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1540</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dijon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1541</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Loudun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Bailly: Traité des Monitoires, ii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1541</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Grasshoppers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lombardy</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>Malleolus: De Exorcismis</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1541</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin<br />(worms, rats,<br />bloodsuckers)</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lausanne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Berriat-Saint-Prix in Thémis, i, p. 196</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1543</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Snails and<br />Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Grenoble</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ménebréa: Jugements rendus contre les<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Animaux, pp. 544, 545, 556. De Actis</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Scindicorum com. St. Jul., etc.</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1545<br />and<br />1546</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">St. Jean de Maurienne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, iii, p. 28, Registres<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">manuscrits de la Tournelle. <i>Cf.</i> Mémoires,</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">cit., viii, p. 429</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1546</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1550</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">"<span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1551</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Goat</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Ile de Rhé</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1554</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sheep (ewe)</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Beaugé</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Aldrovande: De Insectis, 1602, lib. vii, 724.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit. viii, p. 429</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1554</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Bloodsuckers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lausanne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>Desnoyer, cited in Revue des questions<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">historiques, v, p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1554</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Insects</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Langres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1556</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Sens</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de Saint-Quintin, p.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">143. Sorel: Procès contre des animaux,</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">etc., p. 9</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1557</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Saint-Quintin</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1560</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Loigny near Châteaudun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1561</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Augoudessus in Picardy</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lessona: I Nemici del Vino. Regist. Epir.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Par. for May 8</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1562</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Argenteuil</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ranchin on Gui. Pape Quaest., 74. Thémis,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">i, p. 196. Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 429</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1565</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mule</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Montpellier</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, viii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1565</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Not specified</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Toulouse</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: L’Epopée des Animaux</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1566</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>MSS. of Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1567</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Senlis</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, 1811, ii, p. 374</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1572</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Moyen-Montier,<br />near Nancy</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lersner: Chronica, 1706, p. 552</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1574</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Frankfort-on-the-Main</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Brillon: Decisiones Thémis, viii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1575</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Haus-Chronik von Schweinfurt, in<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Zeitschrift für deutsche Kulturgeschichte,</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">i, 156</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1576</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Schweinfurt</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Cannaert: Bydragen tot de Kennis van het<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">oude strafrecht in Vlandern, 1835, p. vii</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1578</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig(?)</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Ghent</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Derheims: Hist. de Saint-Omer, p. 327</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1585</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Saint-Omer</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chorier: Hist. du Dauphiné. <i>Cf.</i> Thémis, i,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 196</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Valence</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>Ménebréa: Jugements rendus contre les<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">animaux, etc., pp. 546, 549</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1587</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">St. Jean-de-Maurienne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Fornery and Laincel</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1596</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dolphins</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Marseilles</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Théophile Raynaud: De Monitoriis, p. 482.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 429</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">16th cent.<br />(first half)</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils and<br />Grasshoppers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Cotentin</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chasseneus: Consilia. Mémoires, cit., viii,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 415</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Snails</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lyons</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Mâcon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Dijon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Louandre: L’Épopée des Animaux</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Scotland</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Duboys: Hist. du Droit Crim. de la France</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">16th cent.<br />second half</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Angers</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor Navarrus:<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Consilia seu Responsa, 1602, ii, p. 812.</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 419. Théoph.</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Raynaud, cit., p. 482</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Spain</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>Francesco Vivio: Decisiones, No. 68. Cited<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">by D’Addosio: Bestie Delinq., p. 125</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">16th cent.<br />second half</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Divers<br />animals</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Aquila in Italy</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Archives of Obwalden</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Gadflies</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Aargau</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. <i>Cf.</i> D’Addosio,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">cit., p. 115</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Naples</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Sardagna: L’uomo e le Bestie. Cited by<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">D’Addosio</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Horse</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Portugal</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Mornacius to Du Cange, <i>s.v.</i> Homicida</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1600</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Beauvais</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Thouars</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Abbeville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, 1890, p. 141</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Vercelli</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Papon: Decisiones. Thémis, viii. Lerouge:<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Reg. secret manuscrit</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1601</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Brie</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Provins</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>Papon: Recueil d’Arrets</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1601</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Not specified</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Charma: Leçons de Philosophie</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1604</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Guerra: Diurnali</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Naples</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Joinville</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1606</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sheep</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Riom</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Châteaurenaud</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Coiffy near Langres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lejeune: Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 418</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Bitch</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Chartres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1607</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Boursant near<br />d’Epernay</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1609</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Montmorency</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Niederrad</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Voltaire: Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. i.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Louandre: Rev. des deux Mondes, 1854,</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">i, p. 334</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1610</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Horse</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1611</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Goat</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Laval</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">St. Fergeux near Rethel</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1613</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Sow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Montoiron near<br />Chatelleraut</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1614</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Le Mans</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Desnoyers: Recherches, etc., p. 13</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1616</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats and<br />insects</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Langres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Anzeige für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">1880, col. 102</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1621</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Machern near Leipsic</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1621</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">La Rochelle</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1622</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Montpensier</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1623</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Bessay near Moulins</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1624</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mule</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Chefboutonne (Poitou)</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Döpler: Theat. pen., ii, p. 574</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1631</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mares and<br />Cows</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Greifenberg</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>Marchisio Michele: Gatte ed. insetti nocivi,<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">1834, p. 63 <i>sqq.</i></span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1633</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Strambino (Ivrea)</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Bellac</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Carpentier to Du Cange, <i>s.v.</i> Homicida</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1641</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Viroflay</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1647</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament of Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1650</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Fresnay near Chartres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Crollolanza: Storia del Contado di<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chiavenna, p. 455 <i>sqq.</i></span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1659</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Caterpillars</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Chiavenna</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Perrero: Gazzetta Litteraria di Torino,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Feb. 24, 1883</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1661</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Turin</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Cotton Mather: Magnalia Christi Americana,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Book vi. London, 1702</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1662</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow, two<br />Heifers,<br />three Sheep,<br />and<br />two Sows</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">New Haven, Conn.</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1666</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Tours</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">St. P. Lemontiers</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1667</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Vaudes near<br />Bar-sur-Seine</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1668</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Angers</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Annales scientifiques de l’Auvergne, Vol.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">vii, p. 391</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1670</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Clermont</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Döpler: Theatrum pen., ii, p. 5</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1676</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare and Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Silesia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1678</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Beaugé</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di Torius, Feb. 24, 1883</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Weevils</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Turin</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Brillon: Decisiones, i, p. 914. Mémoires, cit.,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">viii, p. 431. Boniface: Traité des matières</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">criminelles, 1785, p. 31</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1679</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Parliament d’Aix</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Chorier: Hist du Dauphiné. Thémis, viii</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Before<br />1680</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Worms</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Constance and Coire</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1680</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Fourches near Provins</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>Heinrich Roch: Schlesische Chronik, p. 342.<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Döpler: Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 <i>sqq.</i></span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1681</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Wünschelburg in Silesia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1684</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Ottendorf</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1685</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Striga</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Dulaure: Description des principaux lieux<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">de la France, 1789, v, p. 493 <i>sqq.</i></span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 412</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1690</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Pont-de-Château in<br />Auvergne</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Lerouge: Registre secret manuscrit</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1692</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Mare</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Moulins</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi, p. 79.<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mémoires, cit., viii, p. 431</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">End of<br />17th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Turtledoves</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Canada</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Meiners: Vergleichung des ältern u, neuern<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Russlands, p. 291. <i>Cf.</i> Amira, p. 573</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">He-Goat</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Russia banished to<br />Siberia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Registres de la Paroise de Grignon</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1710</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Rats</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Grignon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>Sorel: Procès contre des animaux, etc., p. 23</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1710</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Autun</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Rinds Herreds Krönike and other sources<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">given by Amira, p. 565</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1711</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Als in Jutland</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Agnel: Curiosités judiciaires et historiques<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">du moyen-âge, p. 46. <i>Cf.</i> Manoel</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bernardes: Nova Floresta ou Sylva de</span><br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">varios apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom.</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lisboá, 1706-47</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1713</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Termites</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Piedade no Maranhão<br />in Brazil</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">MSS. of Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">No. 10,970. D’Addosio: Best. Del., p.</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">107</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1726</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Not specified</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ménebréa: Jugements contre les animaux,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 508</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1731</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Insects</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Thonon</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 <i>sqq.</i> Amira,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">p. 564</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1733</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Buranton</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>Rousseaud de Lacombe: Traité des matières<br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">crim. D’Addosio: Best. Del., p. 107</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1741</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cow</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Poitou</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Ant. de Saint-Gervais: Hist. des Animaux</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1750</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">She-Ass</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Vanvres</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">A Report of the Case of Farmer Carter’s<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dog. Amira, p. 559</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1771</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Chichester, England</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Comparon: Hist. du Tribunal<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Révolutionnaire de Paris. <i>Cf.</i> Sorel, op.</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">cit., p. 16</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1793</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Filangieri: Scienza della Legislazione</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">18th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dogs</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Italy</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Det. Kong. Danske<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Landhusholdnings-Selskabs Skrifter.</span><br />
- <span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ny Saml. ii, 1, 22. Amira, p. 565</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1805-6</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Vermin</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Lyö in Denmark</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Desnoyers: Recherches, etc., p. 15</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1826</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Clermont-Ferrand</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>Gazette des Tribunaux, Jan. 23, 1845</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1845</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Paris</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1864</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Pig</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Pleternica in Slavonia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Krauss, quoted by Amira, p. 573</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">1866</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Pozega in Slavonia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span><span style="margin-left: 2em;">"</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Grasshoppers</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Vidovici in Slavonia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Desnoyer: Recherches, etc., p. 15</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">19th cent.</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Locusts</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Catalonia</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Allg. deutsche Strafrechts-zeitung, 1861,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">No. 2. Also Pertile: Gli animali in</span>
- <br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">giudizio</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Cock</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Leeds in England</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br" valign="top">Cretella: Gli Animali sotto processo in<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fanfulla 1891, No. 65. <i>Cf.</i> Amira, p. 569</span></td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">"</td>
- <td class="br" align="center" valign="top">Wolf</td>
- <td class="dent" align="center" valign="top">Calabria</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td>
- <td class="br">&nbsp;</td></tr>
-<tr><td class="bbr" valign="top">New York Herald and Echo de Paris, May 4,<br /><span style="margin-left: 1em;">1906<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a></span></td>
- <td class="bbr" align="center" valign="top">1906</td>
- <td class="bbr" align="center" valign="top">Dog</td>
- <td class="bb" align="center" valign="top">Délémont in<br />Switzerland</td></tr></table>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_G" id="APPENDIX_G"></a>G</p>
-
-<p>Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passée devant Guiot de
-Montfort, tabellion à Falaise, et donnée par le bourreau de cette
-ville de la somme de <i>dix sols et dix deniers tournois</i> pour sa peine
-et salaire d’avoir trainé, puis pendu à la justice de Falaise une
-truie de l’age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mangé le visage de
-l’enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui était au bers et avoit trois mois et
-environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de <i>dix sols
-tournois pour un gant neuf</i> quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
-cette quittance est donné á Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
-bourreau y declare qu’il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
-et qu’il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.</p></div>
-
-<p>Charange: <i>Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux</i>. Paris, 1764. Tome <span class="smcaplc">II.</span> p.
-72. Also <i>Statistique de Falaise</i>, 1827. Tome <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> p. 63.</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_H" id="APPENDIX_H"></a>H</p>
-
-<p>Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
-scel des obligacions de la vicomté de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
-que par devant Bynet de l’Espiney, clerc tabellion juré ou siege dudit
-lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,<a name='fna_9' id='fna_9' href='#f_9'><small>[9]</small></a> en la
-viconté d’Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
-homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
-Mortaing, c’est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
-paine et salaire d’estre venue d’Avrenches jusques à Mortaing, pour
-faire acomplir et pendre à la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
-lequel avait tué et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
-ladite viconté de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
-à estre trayné et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de <i>Co
-... rin</i>, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
-dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paié, et en quita le roy nostre
-sire, ledit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
-sellé ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C’en fut fait
-l’an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII<sup>e</sup>
-jour de septembre. Signé <span class="smcap">J. Lours</span>. (Countersigned) <span class="smcap">Binet</span>.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Extract from the manuscripts of the <i>Bibliothèque du Roi</i>. <i>Vide</i>
-Mémoires, <i>ibid.</i> pp. 439-40.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_I" id="APPENDIX_I"></a>I</p>
-
-<p>Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King’s proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant à
-Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
-chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
-Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
-justice d’une truye qui avait devoré un petit enffant, a convenu faire
-necessairement les frais, commissions et dépens ci-après déclarés,
-c’est à savoir: Pour dépense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
-parisis.</p>
-
-<p>Item, au maître des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris à Meullant faire
-ladite exécution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
-maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
-parisis.</p>
-
-<p>Item, pour la voiture qui la mena à la justice, six sols parisis.</p>
-
-<p>Item, pour cordes à la lier et hâler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.</p>
-
-<p>Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.</p>
-
-<p>Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
-parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions être vray par
-ces présentes scellées de notre<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> scel, et à greigneur confirmation et
-approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la châtellenie dudit
-lieu de Meullant, le XV<sup>e</sup> de mars l’an 1403. Signé de Baudemont, avec
-paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la châtellenie de Meullant.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Hérisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the <i>Mémoires de la Société Royale
-des Antiquaires de France</i>. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_J" id="APPENDIX_J"></a>J</p>
-
-<p>Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion juré pour le roy nostre sire en la
-viconté du Pont de Larche, fut présent Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
-prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
-avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
-homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
-somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c’est
-assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouvé (livré) le pain
-du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
-(Here the names of these prisoners are given.) <i>Item</i> à ung porc
-admené es dictes prisons, le 21<sup>e</sup> jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
-au 17<sup>e</sup> jour de juillet après en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
-pendu par les gares à un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, à quoy
-il avoit esté condempné pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
-et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13<sup>e</sup>
-jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
-tué ung pettit enfant, auquel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
-pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
-trouvé et baillé la corde qu’il esconvint à lier icelui porc qu’il
-reschapast de ladite prison où il avait esté mis, x deniers tournois.
-Du 16 Octobre 1408.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Derived from manuscripts of the <i>Bibliothèque du Roi</i>. <i>Vide</i> Mémoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_K" id="APPENDIX_K"></a>K</p>
-
-<p>Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
-terres au conté de Bourgoingue, salut.</p>
-
-<p>Oye la supplication de frère Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
-prieurté de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
-le V<sup>e</sup> jour de ce présent mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
-Muet, dit <i>le Hochebet</i>, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
-pors des habitans d’icelle ville ou finaige d’icelle, et au cry de
-l’un d’iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
-sus audit Perrenot, l’ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
-comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu’il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
-suppliant, et par le père dudit Perrenot a esté trouvé blessier à mort
-par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confessè en la
-présence de son dit père e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost après il
-soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
-justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
-arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
-manière qu’il appartient, et<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> encore les détient prissonniers tant
-ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
-que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
-truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessié. Et ledit prieur nous
-ait supplié que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
-trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivré. Nous
-inclinans à sa requeste, avons de gràce especiale ouctroyé et
-consenty, et par ces présentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
-justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l’ung des pourceaulx
-dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis à delivre,
-nonobstant qu’ils aient esté à la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
-mandons que de notre presente grâce vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
-user ledit prieur et autres qu’il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
-grâce.</p>
-
-<p>Donné à Montbar, le XII<sup>e</sup> jour de septembre de l’an de grâce mil CCC
-LXX IX. Ainsi signé. Par monseigneur le duc: <i>J. Potier</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Published by M. Garnier in the <i>Revue des Sociétés Savantes</i>, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 <i>sqq.</i>, from the archives of Côte-d’Or and reprinted by D’Addosio
-in <i>Bestie Delinquenti</i>, pp. 277-8.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_L" id="APPENDIX_L"></a>L</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk’s office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Entre le procureur de messieurs<a name='fna_10' id='fna_10' href='#f_10'><small>[10]</small></a> demandeur et accusateur au
-principal et requérant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
-du quart d’abondant, d’une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accusé,
-deffendeur et défaillant, d’autre part.</p>
-
-<p>Veu le procès criminel, charges et informations, décret de prise de
-corps, adjournement à troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
-dict quart d’habondant, le recollement des dicts témoings et
-<i>recognaissance faicte par les dicts témoings de la chienne dont est
-question</i>, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
-conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d’habondant
-ont esté bien donnés pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accusé,
-attainct et convaincu .........</p>
-
-<p>Pour réparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
-estre pendu et estranglé à une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
-dressée aux lices du Marché aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
-lieu et endroict où<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span> les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
-auparavant ladicte exécution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
-assommée par l’exécuteur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
-les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brûlés et
-mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehendé en sa
-personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
-exécuté par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attaché à ladicte
-potence, et déclarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisqués
-à qui il appartiendra, sur cieux préalablement pris la somme de cent
-cinquante livres d’amende que nous avons adjugées auxdicts sieurs, sur
-laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononcé et exécuté
-par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
-Signé <i>Guyot</i>.</p></div>
-
-<p>[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Hérisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Société Royale des Antiquaires de France. <i>Vide</i> Mémoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_M" id="APPENDIX_M"></a>M</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, près des foussés du Chastelet de dit
-Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
-de Savigny, et ce le 10<sup>e</sup> jour du moys de janvier 1457, présens
-maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
-Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, André Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
-Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins à ce
-appellés et requis, l’an et jour dessus dit.</p>
-
-<p>Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
-dame dudit Savigny, demandeur à l’encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
-Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d’office dudit lieu de
-Savigny, demandeur à l’encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
-Savigny <i>deffendeur</i>, à l’encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
-honorable homme et saige M<sup>r</sup>. Benoit Milot d’Ostun, licencié en loys
-et bachelier en décret, conseïllier de monseigneur le duc de
-Bourgoingne, a été dit et proposé que le mardi avant Noel dernier
-passé, <i>une truye</i>, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
-présentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu’ils été prins en<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span>
-flagrant délit, ont commis et perpetré mesmement ladicte truye murtre
-et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
-de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
-Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
-causes d’office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit défendeur
-répondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit à
-souffisance, et lequel par nous a esté sommé et requis ce il vouloit
-avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
-ledit cas luy a esté faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
-première, deuxiéme et tierce fois, que s’il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
-justice ne s’en deust faire l’on estoit tout prest de les oïr en tout
-ce qu’il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et exécution de justice
-que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
-dit et respondu qui’l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
-ait esté procédé en la manière qui s’ensuit; c’est assavoir que pour
-la partie dudit demandeur, avons esté requis instamment de dire droit
-en ceste cause, en la présence dudit défendeur présent et non
-contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons à tous que
-nous avons procédé et donné nostre sentence deffinitive en la manière
-que s’ensuit; c’est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
-esté proposé pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert à
-souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuëment hue. <i>Aussi
-conseil avec saiges et practiciens</i>, et aussi considéré en ce cas
-l’usance et coustume du païs de Bourgoingne, aïant Dieu devant nos
-yeulx, nous disons et pronunçons par notre dite sentence, déclairons
-la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquée à la justice de
-Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise à justice et au dernier<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> supplice,
-et estre pendus par les pieds derriers à ung arbre esproné en la
-justice de Madame de Savigny, considéré que la justice de madite dame
-n’est mie présentement elevée, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
-arbre esproné, et ansi le disons et prononçons par notre dicte
-sentence et à droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
-qui n’appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangiés dudit Jehan
-Martin, combien que aient estés trovés ensanglantés, l’on remet <i>la
-cause d’iceulx coichons</i> aux tres jours, et avec ce l’on est content
-de les rendre et bailler audit <i>Jehan Bailly</i>, en baillant caucion de
-les rendre s’il est trové qu’il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
-païant les poutures, et fait l’on savoir à tous, sous peine de
-l’amende et de 100 sols tournois qu’ils le dieut et déclairent dedans
-les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, après la
-prononciation d’icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
-promoteur des causes d’office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
-advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demandé
-acte de nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
-ouctroyé, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
-notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
-la présence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommés, je lui ai ouctroyé, ce
-fait l’an et jour dessus dit et présens les dessus tesmoings. <i>Ita
-est.</i> Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est écrit:</p>
-
-<p><i>Item</i>, en oultre, nous juge dessus nommé, savoir faisons que
-incontinent après nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnée par nous les an
-et jour, et en la présence des temoings que dessus, avons sommé et
-requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
-se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recréance d’iceulx; lequel a
-dit et répondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
-en iceulx coichons; et qui s’en rapportoit à ce que en ferions;
-pourquoy sont demeurez à la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
-de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
-causes d’offices, nous en a demandé acte de court, lequel lui nous
-avons ouctroyé et ouctroyons par ces présentes, et avec ce ledict
-procureur de ladicte dame, à moy notaire subescript, m’en demanda
-instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroyé en la presénce desdits
-tesmoings cy-dessus nommés.</p>
-
-<p><i>Item</i>, en après, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
-faisons à tous que incontinent après les chouses dessus dictes, avons
-faict delivrer réalement et de fait ladicte truye à maistre Etienne
-Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant à Châlons-sur-Saône,
-pour icelle mettre à exécucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
-dicte sentence, laquelle délivrance d’icelle trühie faicte par nous
-comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mené sur une
-chairette ladicte truye à ung chaigne esproné, estant en la justice de
-ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esproné, icelluy maistre
-Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant à
-exécution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
-laquelle délivrance et exécution d’icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
-Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demandé acte de
-nostre dicte court à lui estre faicte et donnée, laquelle luy avons
-ouctroyée, et avec ce à moi, notaire subscript, m’a demandé instrument
-ledit procureur à luy estre donnée, je luy ai ouctroyé en la présence
-des temoings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span> cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
-Ainsi signé Mongachot, avec paraphe.</p></div>
-
-<p>Nearly a month later, on “the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin†(which occurred on Feb. 2.), “the six little
-porklets or sucklings†were brought to trial. The following is the <i>procès
-verbal</i>.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussée de l’Estang dudit
-Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
-de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
-Savigny, et ce le vendredy après la feste de la Purification Notre
-Dame Vierge, présens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
-Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.</p>
-
-<p>Veue les sommacions et réquisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
-damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, à Jehan Bailly
-alias Valot de advohé on repudié les coichons de la truye nouvellement
-mise à exécution par justice à raison du murtre commis et perpetré par
-la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
-esté remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
-d’iceulx coichons rendre, s’il estoit trouvé qu’ils feussions
-culpables du délict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
-les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
-instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
-déclairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et à droit:
-iceulx coichons compéter et appartenir comme biens vaccans à ladite
-dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l’usence et la
-coustume de païs le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> sentence, ledit
-procureur de ladite dame en a demandé acte, de nostre dicte court a
-luy estre donnée et ouctroyée. Avec ce en a demandé instrument à moy
-notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroyé en la présence des dessus
-nommés. Signé Mongachot avec paraphe.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boëte 25<sup>e</sup>, liasse 1,
-2, &amp; 3, etc.) <i>Vide</i> Mémoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_N" id="APPENDIX_N"></a>N</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot">
-<p class="right"><i>Le lundi 18 avril 1499.</i></p>
-
-<p>Veu le procès criminel faict par-devant nous à la requeste du
-procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbé et convent de Iosaphat, à
-l’encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers èsprisons de
-céans, pour raison de la mort advenue à la personne d’une jeune
-enfant, nommée Gilon, âgée de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
-enfant avoit eté baillée à nourrice par sa mère: ledict meurtre advenu
-et commis par un pourceau de l’aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
-Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
-et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
-jurisdiction faictes à la requête dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
-sur ce conseil aulx saiges, <i>ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
-condampnés et condampnons en l’amende envers de justice de dix-huit
-franz</i>, qu’il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et à tenir
-prison jusqu’à plein payement et satisfaction d’iceulx à tout le moins
-qu’ils avoient baillé bonne et seure caution d’iceulx.</p>
-
-<p><i>Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau</i>, pour les causes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> contenues
-et établies audict procès, <i>nous les avons condampné et condampnons à
-être pendu et executé par justice</i>, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
-seigneurs, par notre sentence définitive, <i>et à droit</i>.</p>
-
-<p>Donnè sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
-que susdicts. <i>Signé</i> C. Briseg avec paraphe.</p></div>
-
-<p>[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. <i>Vide</i> Mémoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_O" id="APPENDIX_O"></a>O</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
-Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l’église et monastère
-de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Prémontré, et les echevins de
-ce même lieu; comme il nous eust été apporté et affirmé par le
-procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbé et convent de
-Saint-Martin de Laon, qu’en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
-appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
-relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust éstranglé et <i>défacié</i> ung jeune
-enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
-cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
-requérant à cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions procéder, comme
-justice at raison le désiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
-savoir et cognoitre la vérité dudit cas, eussion ouï et examiné par
-serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
-Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
-affirmé par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
-dernier passé ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
-Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
-Dizy ..., ayant délaissé<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span> en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
-renchargea à une sienne fille, âgée de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
-lequel temps ladite fille s’en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
-laissé ledit enfant couché en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
-ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et défigura et mangea
-le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tôt après ledit enfant, au moyen
-des morsures et dévisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
-siecle trépassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
-dudit cas, et afin d’exemplaire et gardé justice, avons dit, jugé,
-sentencié, prenoncé et appointé, que ledit pourceaulz <i>estant detenu
-prisonnier</i> et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
-hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estranglé, en une fourche de bois, auprès et
-joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
-relligieux, estant auprès de leur cense d’Avin.... En temoing de ce
-nous avons scellé ces presentes de notre scel.</p>
-
-<p>Ce fut fait le quatorzième jour de juing, l’an 1494, et scellé en cire
-rouge; et sur le dos est écrit:</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pour ung pourceaulz executé par justice, admené en la cense
-de Clermont, et étranglé en une fourche les gibez d’Avin.</p></div>
-
-<p>[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in <i>L’Annuaire de l’Aisne 1812</i>, p. 88. <i>Vide</i>
-Mémoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_P" id="APPENDIX_P"></a>P</p>
-
-<p>Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>A tous ceulx qui ces présentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
-royal et procureur au bailliage et siège présidial de Senlis, bailly
-et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d’Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
-M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
-faisons:</p>
-
-<p>Veu le procès extraordinairement fait à la requête du Procureur de la
-seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue à une
-jeune fille âgée de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyénor Darmeige
-et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
-trouvée avoir esté mangée et devorée en la tete, main senestre et au
-dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
-appartenant à Louis Mahieu, frère de la dite femme et son proche
-voisin;</p>
-
-<p>Le procès verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
-parrain et de sa marraine qui l’ont recogneu;</p>
-
-<p>Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
-dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span> visitation faicte de la dicte
-truye à l’instant du dit cas advenu et tout consideré en conseil, il a
-été conclu et advisé par justice que <span class="smcaplc">POUR LA CRUAUTÉ ET FEROCITÉ
-COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE</span>, elle sera exterminée par mort et pour ce
-faire sera pendue par l’executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
-estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
-chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses à
-tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
-de ne plus laisser échapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
-seure garde, sous peine d’amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
-s’ily échoit, sauf et sans préjudice à faire droit sur les conclusions
-prinses par le dit Procureur à l’encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
-ainsi que de raison, au témoin de quoy nous avon scellé les présentes
-du scel de la dicte justice.</p>
-
-<p>Ce fu faist le jeudi 27<sup>e</sup> jour de Mars 1557 et exécuté ledit jour par
-l’executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Dom. Grenier, <i>Manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris</i>, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D’Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_Q" id="APPENDIX_Q"></a>Q</p>
-
-<p>Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupré, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
-du Bailly du temporel de l’église &amp; abbaye nôtre Dame de Beauprés de
-l’ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables &amp; discretes personnes &amp; mes
-tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbé &amp; convent de
-ladite abbaye, salut. Comme à la requeste du procureur de mesdits
-seigneurs, &amp; par leur justice temporelle qu’ils ont en leur terre &amp;
-seigneurie du Caurroy eût été nagaires prins &amp; mis en la main d’icelle
-leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant à Jean Boullet
-censier &amp; fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &amp;
-cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau étant aux champs &amp; sur le
-territoiiere d’icelle église, auroit par furiosité occis &amp; mis à mort
-un joine fils, nommé Lucas Dupont, de l’âge de quatorze à quinze ans,
-ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis à la garde de
-ces bestes à corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
-thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
-estre faite, &amp; qu’il fut executé jusqu’à mort inclusivement par la
-justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
-&amp; de la detestation d’iceluy.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> Sur quoy enqueste &amp; information eussent
-été faites de la forme &amp; maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
-procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
-que veu laditte enqueste &amp; information &amp; sur tout en conseil &amp; advis,
-nous par nostre sentence &amp; jugement, avons dies &amp; jugié, que pour
-raison de l’omicide, dont dessus est touchié, fait par ledit thorreau
-en la personne d’iceluy Lucas, &amp; pour la detestation du crime d’iceluy
-homicide, ledit thorreau nommé confisqué à mesdits seigneurs sera
-executé jusques à mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, &amp; pendu à
-une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre &amp; seigneurie dudit
-Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
-le avons condamné &amp; condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
-scel à ces lettres qui furent faites &amp; pronunchiés audit lieu du
-Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
-l’aisné, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes &amp; subjets de mesdits
-seigneurs, Jehan Charles, &amp; Clement le Carpentier, &amp; plusieurs autres
-les seizieme jour de May l’an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
-Ainsi signé, Ileugles, ad ce commis.</p></div>
-
-<p>[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupré. Vide <i>Voyage Littéraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur</i>. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_R" id="APPENDIX_R"></a>R</p>
-
-<p>Scene from Racine’s comedy <i>Les Plaideurs</i>, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.</p>
-
-<p>After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:</p>
-
-<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 11em;">“Venez, famille desolée;</span><br />
-Venez, pauvres enfants qu’on veut rendre orphelins;<br />
-Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.<br />
-Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misère;<br />
-Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre père,<br />
-Notre père par qui nous fûmes engendrés,<br />
-Notre père qui nous....<br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Daudin.</span></span><br />
-Tirez, tirez, tirez.<br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">L’Intime.</span></span><br />
-Notre père, messieurs....<br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Daudin.</span></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!</span><br />
-Ils ont pissé partout.<br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">L’Intime.</span></span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 7em;">Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.</span><br />
-<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 8em;"><span class="smcap">Daudin.</span></span><br />
-Ouf! je me sens dejà pris de compassion.<br />
-Ce que c’est qu’ à propos toucher la passion!<br />
-Je suis bien empêché. La vérité me presse;<br />
-Le crime est avéré, lui-même il le confesse.<br />
-Mais, s’il est condamné, l’embarras est égal;<br />
-Voilà bien des enfants réduits à l’hôpital.â€<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 12em;"><i>Les Plaideurs</i>, Act <span class="smcaplc">III</span>, sc. 3.</span></p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p>
-<p class="center"><a name="APPENDIX_S" id="APPENDIX_S"></a>S</p>
-
-<p>Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.</p>
-
-<div class="blockquot"><p>Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
-Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,<a name='fna_11' id='fna_11' href='#f_11'><small>[11]</small></a> da sie gleich
-hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
-worden. Vber welch vnerhörten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
-Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
-Leipzig sich darüber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
-Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
-abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen öden ort billig geführet,
-daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
-Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
-Schäfferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
-auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.</p></div>
-
-<p>[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-<i>Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit</i>. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]</p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
-
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Abele von Lilienberg, Matthias</span>: Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae, Das ist:
-Seltsame Gerichts-Händel, etc.; 8th ed., Nürnberg, 1712. 1st ed., 1667.
-The funny incidents narrated in this work are cited as “queer judicial
-procedures†in Joh. Weidneri Apophthegmata, Part <span class="smcaplc">III.</span>, No. 69. Abele was
-evidently a great humorist, and must have been a jolly member of the
-“Hochlöbl. Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft,†to which he belonged.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Addosio, Carlo d’</span>: Bestie Delinquenti. Napoli, 1892.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Agnel, Emile</span>: Curiosités judiciaires et historiques du Moyen-Âge. Paris,
-1858. Only Part <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> published.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Amira, Karl von</span>: Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse. Innsbruck, 1891. Printed
-originally in Mittheilungen des Instituts für Oestterreichische
-Geschichtsforschung, xii., pp. 546-601.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Angelis, Francisco Giuseppe de</span>: De Delictis et Poenis. Opera Omnia. Vol.
-i., p. 76. Napoli, 1783.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">Anzeiger für Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit, xxvii. April, No. 4, p. 102.
-Nürnberg, 1880.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Aquinas, Thomas.</span> See <span class="smcap">Thomas</span>.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Arbois de Jubainville, H. d’</span>: Les excommunications d’animaux. Art in Revue
-des Questions Historiques, v., pp. 275-280. Paris, 1868.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ayrault, Pierre</span>: Des Procez faicts au cadaver, aux cendres, à la mémoire,
-aux bestes brutes, aux choses inanimées et aux contumax. Angers, small
-4to, 1591. This work is opposed to such prosecutions, and is reprinted as
-an appendix to the same author’s L’Ordre, Formalité, et Instruction
-Judiciaire, etc. Paris, 1598, 1604, 1610. Lyon, 1642. For an account of
-Pierre Ayrault <i>see</i> Eloge de Pierre Ayrault prononcé devant le cour
-royale d’Angers, à l’audience solonnelle de rentrée le 6 novembre, 1844,
-pas M. Félix Belloc, avocat-général.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Azpilcueta, Martin</span>: Opera. 3 vols., fol. Lyon, 1589; 6 vols. 4to, Ven.,
-1601, 2; 5 vols., Col., 1616. In his Consiliorum, lib. v. De Senten.
-Excom. Consil. 52, he criticises the views of Chassenée. The author is
-commonly known as Dr. Navarre.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Baer, A.</span>: Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer Beziehung. Leipzig, 1893.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bailly, Gaspard</span>: Discours des Sorciers.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Traité des Monitoires, avec un plaidoyer contre les Insects. Lyon,
-1668.</p>
-
-<p class="blockquot">This work contains a full account of the method of procedure in the
-penal prosecution of animals.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Beaumanoir, Philippe de</span>: Les Coutumes de Beauvoisis. Paris, 1690. New
-edition by Le Comte Beugnot. 1842.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Benedictus, Guilielmus</span>: Tractatus Criminalis. Lugduni. 1562.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Benedikt, M.</span>: Anatomische Studien in Verbrecher Gehirnen. Wien, 1879.
-Translated into English. New York, 1881.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Berriat-Saint-Prix</span>: Rapport et Recherches sur le Procès et Jugemens
-relatives aux Animaux. In Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires de
-France. Tome viii., pp., 403-450. Paris, 1827.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bischoff, Theodor L. W.</span>: Das Hirngewicht des Menschen. Eine Studie. Bonn,
-1880.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Boerius</span>: Decisiones aureae Parlamenti Burdegalensis. Dec. 316. Nos. 3, 4,
-6. Lyon, 1620.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Boniface, H</span>: Recueil d’Arrêts notables. Liv. iv.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Traité des Matières Criminelles, p. 31. Paris, 1785.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bouchel, Laurent</span>: La Bibliothèque ou Thresor du Droict Francois. Art.
-Bestail. Paris, 1615. New and enlarged edition, 3 tom., Paris, 1671.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bougeant, Père G. H.</span>: Amusement Philosophique sur le Language des Bestes.
-Paris, 1739. Published anonymously, but written by the Jesuit Père
-Bougeant.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bouthors, A.</span>: Coutumes locales ... d’Amiens, <span class="smcaplc">I.</span>, pp. 354-358. 1845.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Bregenzer, Ignaz</span>: Thier-Ethik. Darstellung der sittlichen und rechtlichen
-Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und Thier. Bamberg, 1894.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Brillon, P. J.</span>: Dictionnaire des Arrêts. Art. Bétail. Paris, 1711.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Brunner, H.</span>: Über absichtslose Missethaten im altdeutschen Strafrechte.
-Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie, xxxv., 1890, pp. 834-839.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Buchner, August</span>: Miscellanea Curiosa. 1686.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Cannaert</span>: Bydragen tot de kennis van het oude Strafrecht in Vlanderen.
-3rd. ed., Gent, 1835.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Carpzov, Benedict</span>: Practica Nova Rerum Criminalium. Wittenberg, 1635. See
-especially Cap. De Crimine Parricidii.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Chassenée, Bartholomew</span>: Consilium Primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest
-propter multiplicem et reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate
-tractatur quaestio illa: De excommunicatione animalium insectorum. 1531;
-1511; 1588.</p>
-
-<p class="blockquot">(Chassenée was afterwards first president of the Parlement de
-Provence, a position corresponding to chief justice.)</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Chorier, Nicolas</span>: Histoire générale de Dauphiné. 2 tom. (<span class="smcaplc">II.</span> p. 712).
-Valence, 1778.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; La Jurisprudence du Jurisconsult Guy Pape dans ces Decisions. Avec
-plusieurs remarkes importantes par McN. C., etc. Liv. iv. Sect. 8, Art.
-14. 1769.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Clarus, Julius</span>: Opera Omnia. Sive practica civilis atque criminalis, etc.
-[Geneva], 1637.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Crollanza</span>: Storia del Contado di Chiavenna, pp. 445-899.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Damhouder, Jodocus</span>: Rerum Criminalium Praxis. Antwerp, 1562.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Desnoyers, J.</span>: Recherches sur la coutume d’exorciser et d’excommunier les
-insectes et autres animaux nuisibles à l’agriculture. Paris, 1853.</p>
-
-<p class="blockquot">Originally published in Bulletin du comité historique des monuments
-écrits de l’histoire de la France.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Dessaix, A.</span>: L’excommunication des Glaciers. Revue des Traditions
-Populaires. Vol. v. 1890.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Döpleri, Jacobi</span>: Theatrum Poenarum, Suppliciorum et Executionum
-Criminalium, oder Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen, etc.
-Sondershausen, Anno <span class="smcaplc">MDCXCIII</span>.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Dulaure, J. H.</span>: Histoire physique, civile et morale de Paris. 7th ed. <span class="smcaplc">III.</span>
-p. 298; 308. Paris, 1856.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Duméril, H.</span>: Les Animaux et les Lois, pp. 6-13. Paris, 1880.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Duret, Jean</span>: Traicté des Peines et Amendes tant pour les Matières
-criminelles que civiles. Lyon, 1573; 1603; 1610.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Eveillon, Jacques</span>: Traité des Excommunications et Monitoires. Chap. 39,
-vol. ii., pp. 436-449. Rouen, 1712.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ferri, Enrico</span>: I Nuovi Orizzonti del Diritto e della Procedura penale.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Das Verbrechen in seiner Abhängigkeit von dem jährlichen
-Temperaturweschsel. Berlin, 1882.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Fevret, Charles</span>: Traité de l’Abus. Lib. vii., ch. 2. No. 38.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Flesch, M.</span>: Untersuchungen über Verbrecher-Gehirne. Würzburg, 1882.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Franck, Wilhelm</span>: Geschichte der Ehemaligen Reichsstadt Oppenheim am Rhein.
-Darmstadt, 1859.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Friedmann, F.</span>: Verbrechen im Roman und auf der Bühne. Berlin, 1890.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Friedrich, Georg</span>: Die Krankheit des Willens vom Standpunkt der Psychologie
-aus betrachtet. München, 1885.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Galton, F.</span>: Inquiries into Human Faculty in its Development. London, 1883.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Garofalo, R.</span>: La Criminologie. Paris, 1888.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Gierke, O.</span>: Humor im deutschen Recht. 2 aufl. 1886, pp. 23-25, 61.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Giuriati, Domenico</span>: Gli Errori Giudiziari, Diagnosi e Rimedi. Milano,
-1893. (See especially chapter iv.)</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Grenus, Theodore Baron de</span>: Documents relatifs à l’Histoire du Pays de
-Vaud. p. 160.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Grimm, Jacob</span>: Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer. 2 aufl. Göttingen, 1844.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Groslée</span>: Ephémerides. Tom <span class="smcaplc">II.</span>, pp. 153-168. Ed. 1811.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">Guidonis Papae Decisiones. q. 238.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Heffter, Aug. Wilh.</span>: Athenäische Gerichtsverfassung. Köln, 1822.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Hottinger, Joh. Heinrich</span>: Historia Ecclesiastica Novi Testamenti. Seculum
-xv., pars quarta, pp. 317-21. Tigvri (Zurich), 1667.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Jets</span>: Over het oude Strafregt in Belgie. p. 89. Brussels, 1826.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lacassagne, A.</span>: De la Criminalité chez les Animaux. Revue Scientifique.
-January 14, 1882. <i>Cf.</i> Kosmos, Zeitschrift für Entwicklungslehre, 1882.
-pp. 264-67.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">La Hontan, Baron de</span>: Voyages. Lettre xi., p. 79. Treats of Excommunication
-of Turtle-Doves in Canada.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lalanne, L.</span>: Curiosités des Traditions. Paris, 1847. pp. 429-436.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lavanderius, Petrus</span>: Tractatus de Doctoribus. Pars <span class="smcaplc">I.</span>, quaest. 18.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lebeuf, l’Abbé</span>: Histoire de Paris, <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> ix., 400.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lebrun, Pierre</span>: Histoire Critique des Pratiques Superstitieuses. Rouen,
-1702.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">Le Conservateur Suisse. Vol. iv., p. 43. Lausanne, 1814.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lionnois</span>: Histoire de Nancy, <span class="smcaplc">II.</span>, 373. 1811.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lersner</span>: Der Stadt Frankfurt Chronica, <span class="smcaplc">I.</span> pp. 551, 552. Proceedings
-against Animals in 1552 and 1574.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lessona, C.</span>: Giurisprudenza Animalesca. Gazzetta Litteraria, Turin 1887,
-Nos. 46 and 48.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Litchenberg, G. C.</span>: Vermischte Schriften, iv., pp. 477-81. Göttingen,
-1802.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Lombroso, C.</span>: Il Delitto negli Animali. Archivio di Psichiatria. Vol. <span class="smcaplc">II.</span>
-Torino, 1881.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; L’Uomo Delinquente. 2 vols. Torino, 1889.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Il Delitto politico, e le Revoluzioni in Rapporto al Diritto, etc.
-Torino, 1890.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; L’Uomo di Genio. Torino, 1888.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Der Verbrecher in anthropologischer, ärztlicher, und juristischer
-Beziehung. Deutsche Bearbeitung von M. O. Fränkel. Hamburg, 1887.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Louandre, Charles</span>: Les Animaux dans la Jurisprudence. Revue des Deux
-Mondes 1854. Tome v., pp. 331-36.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Malleolus, Felix</span>: Tractatus de Exorcismis.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Mangin, Arthur</span>: L’Homme et la Bête. Paris, 1872.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Manoel, Bernardes</span>: Nova Floresta ou Sylva de varios Apothegmas, e ditos
-sentencios espirituaes e moraes. 5 tome. Lisboa, 1706-1747.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Marchisio, Michele</span>: Gatte o Insetti Nocivi, pp. 63 <i>sqq.</i> Turin, 1834.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Maudsley, Henry</span>: Physiology and Pathology of Mind. London, 1868.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie. 2<sup>e</sup> série, vol. ix.
-(vol. xix. de la collection). Paris, 1851.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ménabréa, Leon</span>: De l’Origine de la Forme et de l’Esprit des Jugements
-rendus au Moyen-Age contre les Animaux. Chambery, 1846. Reprint in book
-form of a paper originally published in Mémoires de la Société Royale
-Académique de Savoie. Tome xii., 1846.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Miraut</span>: Histoire de Sardaigne.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Newell, William Wells</span>: Conjuring Rats. The Journal of American Folk Lore
-(January-March, 1892).</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Noordewier, M. J.</span>: Nederduitsche Regtsoudheden. Utrecht, 1853.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Nork, F.</span>: Article in Scheible’s Das Kloster weltlich und geistlich, etc.
-Vol. xii., pp. 942-949. Stuttgart, 1849.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Opzoomer, C. W.</span>: Di Dieren voor den Rechter. Volksalmanak van het jaar
-1862.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Orano, G.</span>: La Criminalità nelle sue relazioni col clima. Roma, 1882.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ortoli, Fr.</span>: Les Procès d’Animaux au moyen-âge. La Tradition. Paris, 1888.
-pp. 77-82. Based on Vernet in Thémis viii.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Osenbrüggen, Eduard</span>: Studien zur deutschen und Schweizerischen
-Rechtsgeschichte. Schaffhausen, 1868. (vii. Die Personificirung der
-Thiere, pp. 139-149.)</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Papon</span>: Recueil d’Arrêts notables des Cours Souveraines de France. Liv.
-xxii., Titre 7.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Peignot, Gabriel</span>: Essai chronologique sur les mœurs, etc. les plus
-remarquables dans la Bourgogne, p. 68. Dijon, 1827.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pertile, Antonio</span>: Gli Animali in Giudizio. Atti del Reale Instituto
-Veneto. Tomo iv., serie vi. Venezia, 1886.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Pierquin</span>: Traité de la Folie des Animaux et de ses Rapports avec celle de
-l’Homme et les Legislations actuelles. Paris, 1839.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Porto, V.</span>: La Scuola criminale positiva et il progetto de nuovo codice.
-Verona, 1884.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Proal, Louis</span>: Le Crime et la Peine. Paris, 1892.</p>
-
-<p class="blockquot">This work is opposed to the theories of Lombroso and the new school of
-criminal anthropologists, but states their views fully and clearly.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Quinones, Juan de</span>: Tratado de Langostas. Madrid, 1620. A treatise on
-exorcisms of locusts, weevils, rats, mice, and birds.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Raynaud, Theophile</span>: De Monitoriis, etc. (Part <span class="smcaplc">II.</span> c. 12, No. 6) in his
-Opusc. Misc. 1665. Tom. xiv., p. 482.</p>
-
-<p class="blockquot">The author criticises Chassenée.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Riccius, Aloysius</span>: Resolutiones (408).</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Roch, Heinrich</span>: Böhmische, Schlesische und Lausitzische Chroniken.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Roche-Flavin, de la</span>: Arrêts notables du Parlement de Toulouse. Liv. iii.
-Titre 2.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Rocher, Le Père</span>: Gloire de l’Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Rosarius, Hierolymus</span>: Quod Animalia Bruta Ratione Utantur melius Homine.
-Amstel., 1654.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Rousseau de Lacombe</span>: Traité des Matières Criminelles. Part 1, ch. 2, sect.
-1, distinct. 8.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Ruchat, Abraham</span>: Abrégé de l’Histoire Ecclésiastique du Pays de Vaud.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Saint-Foix</span>: Oeuvres. 1778, iv., 97.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Sauval</span>: Histoire de Paris. Vol. iii., p. 387.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Schläger</span>: Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Schmid, Reinhold</span>: Gesetze der Angelsachsen. 2nd ed. Leipzig, 1858.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Seifart, K.</span>: Hingerichtete Thiere und Gespenster. Zeitschrift für deutsche
-Kulturgeschichte, 1856, pp. 424-30.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Sloet</span>: Die Dieren in het Germaansche Volksgeloof en Volksgebruik.
-’s-Gravenhage, 1887.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Sorel, Albert</span>: Procès contre des Animaux et Insectes suivis au Moyen-âge
-dans la Picardie et le Valois. Compiegne, 1877.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Stark, Hermann</span>: Griechische Antiquitäten. Vol. i., 487.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Testrup, Kr. S.</span>: Rinds Herreds Kronika (Samlinger til jydsk Historie og
-Topografi. Vol. ii., pp. 62-64) 1711.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Themis Jurisconsulti</span>: Tome i., pp. 178-181; Tome viii., part 2, pp. 45
-<i>sqq.</i></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Thiers</span>: Des superstitions. Vol. i., 48a.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Thomas Aquinas</span>: Summa Theologiæ. Vol. ii., pars, lxxvi., art. 2.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Thonissen, J.</span>: Études sur l’Histoire du Droit Criminel. Vol. ii., pp. 198
-<i>sqq.</i> Bruxelles, 1869.</p>
-
-<p class="hang">&mdash;&mdash; Le Droit pénal de la République Athénienne, pp. 256, 412 <i>sqq.</i> 1875.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Tobler, G.</span>: Thierprocesse in der Schweiz. Bern, 1893.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Torning, Christianus J.</span>: De Peccatis et Poenis Brutorum. A dissertation on
-graduating at the University of Upsala in Sweden. May 25, 1725.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Van Haaften</span>: Die Dieren als misdadigers voor den Rechter. Eigen Haard,
-1884.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Vairo, Leonardo</span>: De Fascino libri tres, etc. Venet. 1599.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Vernet</span>: Lettre ... sur les Procès faits aux Animaux. Thémis, vol. viii.
-B., pp. 45-61.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Vivio, Francesco</span>: Decisiones. No. 68. 1610.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">De Winde</span>: Byzonderheden uit de Geschiedeniss van het strafregt in de
-Nederlanden. Middelburg, 1827.</p>
-
-<p class="hang"><span class="smcap">Zerola, Thomas</span>: Praxis Episcopalis. Sub verbo Superstitio. Venet. 1599.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
-<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX</h2>
-
-
-<p>
-Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil spirits, <a href="#Page_76">76</a><br />
-<br />
-Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-Addosio, Carlo d’, his <i>Bestie Delinquenti</i> cited, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his list of animal prosecutions, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Æschines, cited, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Æschylus, his <i>Choephoroi</i> cited, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Ahuramazda, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<br />
-Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
-<br />
-Altiat, his poem quoted, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
-<br />
-Amira, Prof. Karl von, his <i>Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse</i> cited, <a href="#Page_1">1-3</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a><br />
-<br /><a name="anathemas" id="anathemas"></a>
-Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all incantations and excommunications, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">citations from the Bible in proof of their power, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake Leman, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">turn white bread black to punish heresy, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sold by the Pope, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">hurled against noxious vermin, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">differ from excommunications, <a href="#Page_51">51-54</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by Paris green, <a href="#Page_53">53</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as satellites of Satan or agents of God, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52-57</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">personification of, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their competency as witnesses, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">origin of their judicial prosecution, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as born criminals, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">instances of their criminal prosecution, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37-50</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93-124</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134-157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160-163</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">methods of procedure against, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">whether legally laity or clergy, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">punitive and preventive prosecution of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their consciousness of right and wrong, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">items of expense in prosecuting, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140-143</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">not mere machines, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in folk-lore, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">worship of, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imperfect lists of prosecuted, <a href="#Page_135">135-137</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">burned and buried alive, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">put to the rack to extort confession, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">confiscation of valuable, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">unclean flesh of executed, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">imputed criminality of, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">criminals as ferocious, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mental and moral qualities of men and, <a href="#Page_234">234</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">six categories of their criminal offences, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of men and, <a href="#Page_247">247-252</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Anatolus, his “Geoponics,†<a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
-<br />
-Angel, Emile, cited, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
-<br />
-Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its cruel doctrine of accessories, <a href="#Page_178">178</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on tainted swords, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Angrô-mainyush, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br />
-<br />
-Anthony, St., patron of pigs, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
-<br />
-Anthropologists, criminal researches of <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a><br />
-<br />
-Aquinas. <i>See</i> <a href="#thomas">Thomas</a><br />
-<br />
-Arcadius, his atrocious edict, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Ashes, modern and mediæval use of vermifugal, <a href="#Page_53">53</a><br />
-<br />
-Augustine, St., cited, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-<i>Aura corrumpens</i> in houses and stalls, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
-<br />
-Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
-<br />
-Avesta, on exorcisms, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on good and evil creations, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on mad dogs, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br />
-<br />
-Azpilcueta, Martin. <i>See</i> <a href="#navarre">Dr. Navarre</a>.<br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his preference for black beasts, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bailly, Gaspard, his <i>Traité des Monitoires</i> cited, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92-108</a><br />
-<br />
-“Basilisk-egg,†<a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
-<br />
-Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
-<br />
-Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br />
-<br />
-Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
-<br />
-Beasts, sweet and stenchy, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
-<br />
-Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
-<br />
-Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, <a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
-<br />
-Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
-<br />
-Bernardes, Manoel, his <i>Nova Floresta</i>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
-<br />
-Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">list of prosecuted animals, <a href="#Page_135">135-137</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bichat, his defective cranium, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br />
-<br />
-Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of unexpiated crime on persons and property, <a href="#Page_6">6-8</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Blackstone, on deodands, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
-<br /><a name="blood" id="blood"></a>
-Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
-<br />
-“Blue Laws,†an advance in penal legislation, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
-<br />
-Bodelschwingh, his <i>bacillus infernalis</i>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
-<br />
-Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, <a href="#Page_127">127</a><br />
-<br />
-Boër, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
-<br />
-Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br />
-<br />
-Bonnivard, François, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<br />
-Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, <a href="#Page_208">208</a><br />
-<br />
-Bougeant, Père, his <i>Amusement Philosophique</i> cited, <a href="#Page_66">66-69</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><a href="#Page_80">80-86</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88-90</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bracton, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on deodands, <a href="#Page_186">186</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, <a href="#Page_217">217-219</a><br />
-<br />
-Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
-<br /><a name="buggery" id="buggery"></a>
-Buggery, instances of this “nameless crime,†<a href="#Page_147">147-153</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in the Carolina punished with death by fire, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in the Mosaic law, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Bull, executed for murder, <a href="#Page_161">161</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Calvin, his conception of God, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<br />
-Canute, King, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Carolina, the, its severe penalties, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
-<br />
-Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br />
-<br />
-Cattle, bewitched by bad air, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
-<br />
-Cervantes, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
-<br />
-Character, factors in the formation of, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">responsibility for, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>, <a href="#Page_225">225</a><br />
-<br />
-Chassenée, Bartholomew, his <i>Consilia</i>, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21-23</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his erudition, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his absurd deductions, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, <a href="#Page_32">32</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan and as agents of God, <a href="#Page_3">3-6</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">capital punishment never inflicted by, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Cicero, cited, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his approval of atrocious penalties, <a href="#Page_178">178</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">nature and origin of its supposed eggs, <a href="#Page_163">163-5</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Cockatrice, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
-<br />
-Coleridge, his definition of madman, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
-<br />
-Corpses, prosecuted and executed, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">cannot inherit, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></span><br />
-<br />
-“Corruption of blood,†in theology and law, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br />
-<br />
-Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
-<br />
-Cows, executed for homicide, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
-<br />
-Cranks, execution of, <a href="#Page_249">249-251</a><br />
-<br />
-Cretella, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
-<br />
-Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sentenced to death, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Criminality, examples of imputed, <a href="#Page_177">177-185</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ancient and mediæval conceptions of, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">punished for the safety of society, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">compared to vitriol, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">supposed physical indices of, <a href="#Page_213">213-217</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">casual and constitutional, <a href="#Page_214">214-223</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">ativism the source of, <a href="#Page_212">212</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the result of hypnotism, <a href="#Page_223">223-225</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">due to many uncontrollable conditions, <a href="#Page_230">230</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">motives underlying animal, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">animals conscious of, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">contagiousness of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
-<br />
-Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br />
-<br />
-Cybele, invoked against vermin, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his <i>Rerum Criminalium Praxis</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">citations from this work, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra’s teachings degraded by the, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
-<br />
-Demosthenes, cited, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Deodands, nature of, <a href="#Page_186">186-190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">abolished in England under Queen Victoria, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Devils, their damage to landed property, <a href="#Page_7">7</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">multiplied by the spread of Christianity, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, <a href="#Page_68">68-70</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">incarnate in every babe, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">maladies produced by, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">modern inventions the devices of, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Didymos, his “Geoponics,†<a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
-<br />
-Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his assassination, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
-<br />
-Dogs, trial and execution of mad, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">crucified in Rome for imputed crime, <a href="#Page_177">177</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Döpler, Jacob, on sodomy, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on <i>Lex talionis</i>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on vampires, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Draco (Drakôn), his law punishing weapons, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, <a href="#Page_253">253-255</a><br />
-<br />
-Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<br />
-Dumas, his <i>Count of Monte Christo</i> cited, <a href="#Page_240">240</a><br />
-<br />
-Duret, Jean, his <i>Treatise on Pains and Penalties</i>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime from a psychiatrical point of view, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
-<br />
-Eldrad, St., expels serpents, <a href="#Page_50">50</a><br />
-<br />
-Electricity, execution by, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
-<br />
-Elk, as demon, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
-<br />
-Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Erinnys, appeasing the, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Escheat, in Scotch law, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br />
-<br />
-Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
-<br />
-Eustace, St., <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
-<br />
-Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sold at Rome, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">properly speaking, animals not subject to, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comical survivals of, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>.</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>See</i> <a href="#anathemas">Anathemas</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">applied as plasters, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">superseded by conjurations among Protestants, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">by Mohammedans, <a href="#Page_137">137</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<br />
-<i>Felo de se</i>, a sort of treason, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>.<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>See</i> <a href="#suicide">Suicide</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-Field-mice, conjuration of, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
-<br />
-Flesh of executed animals tainted, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
-<br />
-Flies as demons, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
-<br />
-Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, <a href="#Page_136">136</a><br />
-<br />
-Fly-flaps, papal, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
-<br />
-Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
-<br />
-Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Fox, diabolical nature of the, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span><br />
-Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, <a href="#Page_207">207</a><br />
-<br />
-Fricker, Thüring, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger, <a href="#Page_116">116</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
-<br />
-Galton, on heredity, <a href="#Page_239">239</a><br />
-<br />
-Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br />
-<br />
-Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers, <a href="#Page_177">177</a><br />
-<br />
-Genius, to madness close allied, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
-<br />
-Görres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
-<br />
-Gratiolet, on the brain of the “Hottentot Venus,†<a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
-<br />
-Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, <a href="#Page_132">132</a><br />
-<br />
-Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
-<br />
-Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bâle, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
-<br />
-Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Harpokration, Valerius, cited, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Harrison, Miss, cited, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
-<br />
-Hart, symbolism of the, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, <a href="#Page_252">252</a><br />
-<br />
-Hemmerlein, Felix. <i>See</i> <a href="#malleolus">Malleolus</a><br />
-<br />
-Hens, crowing, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
-<br />
-Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and scientists, <a href="#Page_232">232</a><br />
-<br />
-Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br />
-<br />
-Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br />
-<br />
-Honorius, his atrocious edict, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Horses, condemned to death for homicide, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
-<br />
-Hubert, St., <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br />
-<br />
-Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild animals, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, <a href="#Page_223">223-226</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, <a href="#Page_225">225</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Idols, decapitation of, <a href="#Page_174">174</a><br />
-<br />
-Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, <a href="#Page_113">113-115</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">not in Noah’s Ark, <a href="#Page_120">120</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Insanity, degrees of, <a href="#Page_200">200-203</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Italian and German law, <a href="#Page_204">204-206</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">difficulty of defining, <a href="#Page_226">226-228</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in English law, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">moral, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as a shelter for crime, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></span><br />
-<br /><a name="insects" id="insects"></a>
-Insects, prosecution of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41-49</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">incarnations of demons, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span>Italy, palliation of crime in, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, <a href="#Page_240">240-246</a><br />
-<br />
-Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br />
-<br />
-John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
-<br />
-Jonson, Ben, cited, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
-<br />
-Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br />
-<br />
-Jörgensen, cited, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
-<br />
-Joshua, his penal cruelty, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br />
-<br />
-Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, <a href="#Page_219">219</a><br />
-<br />
-Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
-<br />
-Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, <a href="#Page_171">171</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
-<br />
-Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, <a href="#Page_235">235</a><br />
-<br />
-Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by, <a href="#Page_141">141</a><br />
-<br />
-Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, <a href="#Page_163">163</a><br />
-<br />
-Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
-<br />
-Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, <a href="#Page_169">169</a><br />
-<br />
-Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
-<br />
-Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, <a href="#Page_254">254</a><br />
-<br />
-Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal justice, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">inflicts horrible mutilations, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
-<br />
-Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
-<br />
-Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prosecution of, <a href="#Page_95">95-108</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical possession, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br />
-<br />
-Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">opposed to trial by jury, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of criminality, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on ativism as the source of crime, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">innate criminality not eradicated by education, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of animals, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, <a href="#Page_74">74</a><br />
-<br />
-Lycia, punished by imputation, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Majolus, cited, <a href="#Page_86">86</a><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>Maledictions. <i>See</i> <a href="#anathemas">Anathemas</a><br />
-<br /><a name="malleolus" id="malleolus"></a>
-Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg professors, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">records a prosecution of Spanish flies, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his formula for banning serpents, <a href="#Page_121">121</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Mangin, Arthur, cited, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a><br />
-<br />
-Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br />
-<br />
-Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta’s skull to that of a savage, <a href="#Page_217">217</a><br />
-<br />
-Mantegazza, Prof., his “tormentatore,†<a href="#Page_245">245</a><br />
-<br />
-Manu, Institutes of, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Marro, on metaphors as facts, <a href="#Page_216">216</a><br />
-<br />
-Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight beasts, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
-<br />
-Ménebréa, M. L., <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his theory untenable, <a href="#Page_40">40</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, <a href="#Page_85">85</a><br />
-<br />
-Mithridates, experiments with poisons, <a href="#Page_244">244</a><br />
-<br />
-Moles, prosecution of, <a href="#Page_111">111-113</a><br />
-<br />
-Monks, as landed proprietors in France, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
-<br />
-Monomania, frequency of, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
-<br />
-Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
-<br />
-Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<br />
-Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, <a href="#Page_229">229</a><br />
-<br />
-Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">barbarity of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Murder, miasma of, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_174">174</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">weapons tainted by, <a href="#Page_187">187-190</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
-<br />
-Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in modern life, <a href="#Page_228">228</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, <a href="#Page_212">212</a><br />
-<br />
-Narrenkötterlein, dog sentenced to a, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
-<br />
-Nature, imperfection of, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br />
-<br /><a name="navarre" id="navarre"></a>
-Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
-<br />
-Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<br />
-Nikôn, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Noah, God’s covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br />
-<br />
-Novels, morbific influence of sensational, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-Numa Pompilius, quoted, <a href="#Page_106">106</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his law for protecting boundary stones, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
-<br />
-Osenbrüggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>Ovid, quoted, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Oxen, executed, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">punished although innocent, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
-<br />
-Pape, Guy, cited, <a href="#Page_108">108</a><br />
-<br />
-Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br />
-<br />
-Pardoning power, exercise of the, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
-<br />
-Parsis, their Dasturs, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">co-workers of Ahuramazda, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">no doctrine of atonement, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, <a href="#Page_62">62</a><br />
-<br />
-Patriotism as a perverter of justice, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br />
-<br />
-Pausanias cited, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Penology, man and beast in modern, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">mediæval and modern, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206-210</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">in Italy and Germany, <a href="#Page_203">203-206</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">brutality of mediæval, <a href="#Page_206">206-209</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">moral and penal responsibility, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">still inchoate, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219-223</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">deterrent aims of, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">law of the survival of the fittest in, <a href="#Page_221">221-223</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">punitive and preventive, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its relation to psycho-pathology, <a href="#Page_248">248</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br />
-<br />
-Perjury, retaliative punishment of, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
-<br />
-Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br />
-<br />
-Phlebotomy. <i>See</i> <a href="#blood">Blood-letting</a><br />
-<br />
-Pico di Mirandola, quoted, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Piety, market value of, <a href="#Page_7">7</a><br />
-<br />
-Pigs. <i>See</i> <a href="#swine">Swine</a><br />
-<br />
-Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, <a href="#Page_29">29</a><br />
-<br />
-Plato, his theory of creation, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on homicidal animals, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">on retributive and preventive punishment, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pliny, quoted, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Pollux, Julius, quoted, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br />
-<br />
-Predestination in theology and science, <a href="#Page_232">232-234</a><br />
-<br />
-Prussia, barbarous punishments, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">opposed to reform, <a href="#Page_205">205</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, <a href="#Page_172">172</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">but not corpses, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, <a href="#Page_256">256</a><br />
-<br />
-Puritans, their penal enactments, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
-<br />
-Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, <a href="#Page_87">87</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, <a href="#Page_56">56-58</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Racine, his caricature of beast trials in <i>Les Plaideurs</i>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_361">361</a><br />
-<br />
-Ram, banished to Siberia, <a href="#Page_175">175</a><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, <a href="#Page_130">130</a><br />
-<br />
-Rats, prosecution of, <a href="#Page_18">18-21</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">friendly letters of advice to, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Irish custom of rhyming, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Raven, an imp of Satan, <a href="#Page_57">57</a><br />
-<br />
-Renaud d’Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br />
-<br />
-Responsibility, moral and penal, <a href="#Page_210">210</a><br />
-<br />
-Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of superstition, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
-<br />
-Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, <a href="#Page_73">73</a><br />
-<br />
-Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">regards animals as often more rational than men, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Satan, his earthly sovereignty, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the doctrine of his final redemption, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br />
-<br />
-Schläger, cited, <a href="#Page_176">176</a><br />
-<br />
-Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
-<br />
-Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, <a href="#Page_113">113-115</a><br />
-<br />
-Scholasticism, quiddities of, <a href="#Page_33">33</a><br />
-<br />
-Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">man’s responsibility for character alone, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br />
-<br />
-Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br />
-<br />
-Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">freed from poison by St. Hugon, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Shakespeare, alludes to “be-rhymed†rats, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and a wolf on the gallows, <a href="#Page_157">157</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Silius Italicus, quoted, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
-<br />
-Socrates, on self-perfection, <a href="#Page_234">234</a><br />
-<br />
-Sodomy. <i>See</i> <a href="#buggery">Buggery</a><br />
-<br />
-Soldan, cited, <a href="#Page_17">17</a><br />
-<br />
-Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br />
-<br />
-Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, <a href="#Page_198">198</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">strangled in prison, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></span><br />
-<br /><a name="suicide" id="suicide"></a>
-Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">due to manifold influences, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br />
-<br />
-Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
-<br /><a name="swine" id="swine"></a>
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>Swine, execution of, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140-145</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-157</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>;</span><br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Gadarene, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Swords, tainted, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Taine, his definition of man, <a href="#Page_214">214</a><br />
-<br />
-Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, <a href="#Page_236">236</a><br />
-<br />
-Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, <a href="#Page_180">180</a><br />
-<br />
-Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, <a href="#Page_213">213</a><br />
-<br />
-Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their defender as more industrious than the friars, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br />
-<br />
-Tertullian, quoted, <a href="#Page_106">106</a><br />
-<br />
-Theognis, his bust punished for murder, <a href="#Page_172">172</a><br />
-<br />
-Thomas à Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., <a href="#Page_198">198</a><br />
-<br /><a name="thomas" id="thomas"></a>
-Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, <a href="#Page_53">53-55</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
-<br />
-Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
-<br />
-Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br />
-<br />
-Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, <a href="#Page_1">1</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
-<br />
-Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law, <a href="#Page_179">179-181</a><br />
-<br />
-Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the fig-tree, <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br />
-<br />
-Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
-<br />
-Tribunals, proper office of criminal, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_248">248</a><br />
-<br />
-Tritheim, on Satan’s invisible apparition, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
-<br />
-Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br />
-<br />
-Türler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical court of Berne, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Vampires, superstitions concerning, <a href="#Page_195">195-198</a><br />
-<br />
-Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, <a href="#Page_178">178</a><br />
-<br />
-Venidad, quoted, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
-<br />
-Ventilation, “bewitched kine†the result of bad, <a href="#Page_8">8</a><br />
-<br />
-Vermin. <i>See</i> <a href="#insects">Insects</a><br />
-<br />
-Virgil, quoted, <a href="#Page_26">26</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, <a href="#Page_38">38-49</a><br />
-<br />
-Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, <a href="#Page_75">75</a><br />
-<br />
-Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">decree for their extermination, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></span><br />
-<br />
-<i>Werther</i>, Goethe’s, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
-<br />
-<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, <a href="#Page_125">125</a><br />
-<br />
-Witches in Judaic and mediæval law, on a par with animals, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>;<br />
-<span style="margin-left: 1em;">rendered harmless by burning, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></span><br />
-<br />
-Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, <a href="#Page_9">9</a><br />
-<br />
-<br />
-Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, <a href="#Page_57">57-59</a><br />
-<br />
-Zoöpsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology, <a href="#Page_237">237</a><br />
-<br />
-Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, <a href="#Page_201">201</a><br />
-</p>
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p>
-<p class="center"><i>Richard Clay &amp; Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.</i></p>
-
-
-
-<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
-<hr style="width: 50%;" />
-<p><b>Footnotes:</b></p>
-
-<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> The name is also spelled Chassanée and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> “Item: a été délibéré que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l’on contribuera aux frais au pro rata.â€</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> These animals are spoken of as <i>unvernünftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmäuse</i>. <i>Lut</i> might be derived from the Old German <i>lût</i> (<i>Laut</i>,
-Schrei), in which case <i>Lutmaus</i> would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from <i>lutum</i> (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediæval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of “monitoires†and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_9' id='f_9' href='#fna_9'>[9]</a> In modern French <i>pendard</i> means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_10' id='f_10' href='#fna_10'>[10]</a> Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.</p>
-
-<p><a name='f_11' id='f_11' href='#fna_11'>[11]</a> <i>Mietkuhe</i>, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.</p>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
-
-Author: Edmund P. Evans
-
-Release Date: July 23, 2013 [EBook #43286]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: ASCII
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
-
-ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. Fully illustrated. In one
-Vol. Crown 8vo. Price 9_s._
-
-EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. In one Vol. Crown 8vo. Price
-9_s._
-
-LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: Execution of a Sow.]
-
-
-
-
- THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND
- CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
- BY E. P. EVANS
- AUTHOR OF
- "ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE,"
- "EVOLUTIONAL ETHICS AND ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC., ETC.
-
-
- [Illustration]
-
-
- LONDON
- WILLIAM HEINEMANN
- MCMVI
-
-
-
-
-_Copyright 1906 by William Heinemann_
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-
- INTRODUCTION
-
- Sources--Amira's distinction between retributive and
- preventive processes--Addosio's incorrect designation of
- the latter as civil suits--Inconsistent attitude of the
- Church in excommunicating animals--Causal relation of crime
- to demoniacal possession--Squatter sovereignty of devils--
- _Aura corrumpens_--Diabolical infestation and lack of
- ventilation--"Bewitched kine"--Greek furies and Christian
- demons--Homicidal bees, laying cocks and crowing hens--
- Theory of the personification of animals--Beasts in
- Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws--Animal prosecutions
- and witchcraft--The Mosaic code in Christian courts--Pagan
- deities as demons--Born malefactors among beasts--The
- theory of punishment in modern criminology _p._ 1
-
-
- CHAPTER I
-
- BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
- Criminal prosecution of rats--Chassenee appointed to defend
- them--Report of the trial--Chassenee employed as counsel in
- other cases of this kind--His dissertation on the subject--
- Nature of his argument--Authorities and precedents--The
- withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and
- explained by Dr. Trench--Eels and blood-suckers in Lake
- Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of
- Heidelberg theologians--White bread turned black, and
- swallows, fish, and flies destroyed by anathema--St.
- Pirminius expels reptiles--Vermifugal efficacy of St.
- Magnus' crosier--Papal execratories--Animals regarded by
- the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of
- clergy--Methods of procedure--Jurisdiction of the courts--
- Records of judicial proceedings against insects--Important
- trial of weevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over
- more than eight months--Untenableness of Menebrea's
- theory--Summary of the pleadings--Futile attempts at
- compromise--Final decision doubtful--St. Eldrad and the
- snakes--Views of Thomas Aquinas--Distinction between
- excommunication and anathema--"Sweet beasts and stenchy
- beasts"--Animals as incarnations of devils--Their
- diabolical character assumed in papal formula for blessing
- water to kill vermin--Amusing treatise by Pere Bougeant on
- this subject--All animals animated by devils, and all
- pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them--Demons
- the real causes of diseases--Father Lohbauer's prescription
- in such cases--Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.--
- Recent instances of demoniacal possession--Hoppe's
- psychological explanation of them--Charcot on faith-cures--
- Why not the duty of the Catholic Church to inculcate
- kindness to animals--Zooelatry a form of demonolatry--Gnats
- especially dangerous devils--Bodelschwingh's discovery of
- the _bacillus infernalis_--Gaspard Bailly's disquisition
- with specimens of plaints, pleas, etc.--Ayrault protests
- against such proceedings--Hemmerlein's treatise on
- exorcisms--Criminal prosecution of field-mice--Vermin
- excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne--Protocol of
- judicial proceedings against caterpillars--Conjurers of
- cabbage-worms--Swallows proscribed by a Protestant
- parson--Custom of writing letters of advice to rats--Writs
- of ejectment served on them--Rhyming rats in Ireland--
- Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos--Capital
- punishment of larger quadrupeds--Berriat-Saint-Prix's
- Reports and Researches--List of culprits--Beasts burned and
- buried alive and put to the rack--Swine executed for
- infanticide--Bailly's bill of expenses--An ox decapitated
- for its demerits--Punishment of buggery--Cohabitation of a
- Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy--Trial of a
- sow and six sucklings for murder--Bull sent to the gallows
- for killing a lad--A horse condemned to death for
- homicide--A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural
- crime of laying an egg--Lapeyronie's investigation of the
- subject--Racine's satire on such prosecutions in _Les
- Plaideurs_; _Lex talionis_--Tit for tat the law of the
- primitive man and the savage--The application of this iron
- rule in Hebrew legislation--Flesh of a culprit pig not to
- be eaten--Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects--
- Recent execution of idols in China--Russian bell sentenced
- to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection--
- Pillory for dogs in Vienna--Treatment prescribed for mad
- dogs in the Avesta--Cruelty of laws, of talion and decrees
- of corruption of blood--Examples in ancient and modern
- legislation--Cicero approves of such penalties for
- political offences--Survival of this conception of justice
- in theology--Constitutio Criminalis Carolina--Lombroso
- opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism--
- Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts--Deodand in English
- law--Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland--
- Blackstone's theory of it untenable--Penalties inflicted
- for suicide--Ancient legislation on this subject--
- Legalization of suicide--Abolition of deodands in England _p._ 18
-
-
- CHAPTER II
-
- MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
- Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
- Mediaeval tribunals cut with the executioner's sword the
- intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
- untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
- ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
- vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
- little children "even on Friday"--Pope Stephen VI. brings
- the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediaeval and modern
- conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
- jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
- pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
- these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediaeval
- penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
- sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--"Blue Laws" a great
- advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and
- penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
- abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity
- of criminals, but simply an indication of low aesthetic
- sense--Theories of the origin and nature of crime--
- Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the
- encephalon--Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat,
- Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly
- dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures
- proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not
- sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--
- Difficulty of defining insanity--Coleridge's definition too
- inclusive--Predestination and evolution--Criminality among
- the lower animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
- Schopenhauer's doctrine of responsibility for character--
- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret--
- "Method in Madness" not uncommon--Social safety the supreme
- law--Application of this principle to "Cranks"--Spirit of
- imitation peculiarly strong in such classes--Contagiousness
- of crime--Criminology now in a period of transition _p._ 193
-
-
- APPENDIX
-
- A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
- agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
- coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
- Amblevins _p._ 259
-
- B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
- Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
-
- C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
- against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
-
- D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
- the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
- of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
-
- E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
- commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
- sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
-
- F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
- of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
-
- G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
- Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
- Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
- of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a
- new glove _p._ 335
-
- H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
- acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous
- tournois from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for
- having hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child
- in the parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
-
- I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
- Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
- bailiff and the king's proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
- certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
- had devoured a small child _p._ 338
-
- J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
- Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont
- de Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and
- six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and
- to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
-
- K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
- Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of
- the Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
- Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
- which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
- the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
- sows _p._ 342
-
- L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
- the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
- be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
-
- M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
- 1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
- sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
- the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
-
- N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
- prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
- Josaphat, in the Commune of Seves, near Chartres, against a
- pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
- this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
- for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
-
- O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor
- of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon,
- condemning a pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide
- committed on the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
-
- P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
- and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
- Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout
- to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a
- girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
- said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on
- penalty of an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
-
- Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
- by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupre, for furiously
- killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
- years of age _p._ 358
-
- R. Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
- dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
- capon _p._ 360
-
- S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
- University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
- killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
-
-
- BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
-
- INDEX _p._ 373
-
-
-
-
-THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
-essays entitled "Bugs and Beasts before the Law," and "Modern and Mediaeval
-Punishment," which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
-September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
-additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
-writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
-Professor Karl von Amira's _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
-1891), Carlo d'Addosio's _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
-Tobler's _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
-works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
-facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
-already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
-extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
-L. Menebrea, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenee, cited in
-the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
-remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
-from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
-some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
-thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
-historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
-it by legal procedure.
-
-Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
-and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
-secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
-penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
-ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
-vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
-them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
-and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
-arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
-household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
-court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
-them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
-the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
-custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
-not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
-civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
-exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
-to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
-the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
-the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
-"metaphysical aid" and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
-conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
-specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
-there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
-proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
-whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
-sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
-was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
-offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
-futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
-was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
-
-D'Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
-homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
-vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
-(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
-proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
-for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
-character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
-malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
-excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
-to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
-and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
-maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
-exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
-any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
-spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
-Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
-to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
-
-The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
-phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
-vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
-(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
-deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
-ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
-agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
-point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
-regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
-Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
-were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
-proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
-Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
-adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
-propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
-instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
-some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
-hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
-scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
-they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
-cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
-comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
-of both kinds of treatment.
-
-It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
-was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
-necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
-maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
-that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
-disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
-supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
-thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
-was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
-Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der roemischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
-edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
-manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
-the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
-murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
-remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
-that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
-will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
-may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
-will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
-human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
-the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
-infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
-property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
-successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
-possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
-has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
-devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
-expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
-affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
-it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
-suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
-of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
-the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
-the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
-derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
-character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
-upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
-hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
-from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
-habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
-"godliness is profitable" not only "unto all things," but also, as
-mediaeval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
-apostle Paul in his admonitions to his "son Timothy" never dreamed of. We
-are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
-infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
-retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
-sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
-excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
-enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
-the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
-lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
-instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
-_benedictiones locorum_.
-
-We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
-"bewitched kine." European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
-so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
-result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
-cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
-the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
-attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
-proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
-conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
-air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
-reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
-peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
-proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
-purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
-that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
-into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
-
-The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
-beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
-furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediaeval Church taught the
-same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
-the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
-decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
-him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
-more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
-demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
-declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
-liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
-"transgressed in the thing accursed." It was the same horror of aiding
-and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
-that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
-"basilisk-egg," or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
-summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
-could be averted.
-
-A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrueggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
-schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
-endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
-personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
-thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
-an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
-category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
-this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediaeval times
-domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
-the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
-all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king's ban
-and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
-habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
-did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
-lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
-thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
-responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
-killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
-by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
-over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
-recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
-as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
-of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
-court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
-holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
-house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
-objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
-but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
-anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
-capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
-light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrueggen's
-statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bale was personified as
-a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
-and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
-fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
-an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
-cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
-the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
-evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
-His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
-consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
-heresy.
-
-The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
-the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
-superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
-in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
-ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
-witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
-have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
-to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
-against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
-therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
-of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
-adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
-delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
-incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
-the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
-boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
-gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
-aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
-Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
-demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
-henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
-devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
-endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
-Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
-new convert saw them with his mind's eye skulking about in obscure places,
-haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
-habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
-old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
-untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
-be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
-the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
-interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
-sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
-agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
-and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
-still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
-of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
-subject can deny.
-
-Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
-deutschen Bischoefe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
-Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
-vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
-crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
-German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
-periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
-and Der Sendbote des goettlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
-Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
-
-It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
-juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
-psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
-the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
-for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
-concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
-animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
-others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
-of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
-recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
-Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
-laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
-perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
-consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
-creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
-justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
-punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
-which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
-of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
-revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
-possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
-practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
-remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
-eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
-anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
-commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
-factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
-jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
-responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
-worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
-and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
-
-In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
-Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
-Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
-exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
-been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
-frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
-picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
-taken from Arthur Mangin's _L'Homme et la Bete_ (Paris, 1872), of which
-all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
-the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
-
-The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder's _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
-(Antverpiae, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
-representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
-the head of the chapter entitled "De Damno Pecuario" is a lively picture
-of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
-process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
-
-The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
-proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
-complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
-centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
-
-The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
-principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
-rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
-Such, for example, are "Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere," in _Miscellen aus
-der neuesten auslaendischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
-Joergensen's _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
-Cretella's "Gli Animali sotto Processo," in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
-(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
-Berriat-Saint-Prix and Menabrea, and Soldan's "La Personification des
-Animaux in Helvetia," in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
-(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrueggen's theory.
-
-In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
-Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
-the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
-courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
-committed to their keeping.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I
-
-BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW
-
-
-It is said that Bartholomew Chassenee,[1] a distinguished French jurist of
-the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l'Eveque in 1480), made his reputation
-at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before
-the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously
-eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On
-complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop's
-vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to
-appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenee to defend them.
-
-In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenee
-was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas
-and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in
-the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least
-to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first
-place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract
-of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was
-insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a
-second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes
-inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time
-which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the
-proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his
-clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the
-serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of
-their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with
-fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this
-point Chassenee addressed the court at some length, in order to show that
-if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with
-safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,
-even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point
-was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud
-between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.
-
-At a later period of his life Chassenee was reminded of the legal
-principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more
-worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was
-president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on
-a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of
-heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrieres and
-Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a
-gentleman from Arles, Renaud d'Alleins, ventured to suggest to the
-presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these
-unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an
-advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by
-all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly
-insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that
-even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper
-person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenee thereupon obtained a
-decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be
-heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the
-state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been
-produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.
-(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]
-
-In the report of the trial published in the _Themis Jurisconsulte_ for
-1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the
-celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,
-the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the
-judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which
-Chassenee conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to
-bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public
-interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic
-orator.
-
-Chassenee is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but
-no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible
-that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial
-town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole
-subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled
-_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et
-reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:
-De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the
-first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal
-questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,
-loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a
-peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published
-in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to
-in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in
-the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.
-
-This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of
-the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a
-decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes
-or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was
-granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenee now
-raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done
-(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.
-"The principal question," he says, "is whether one can by injunction cause
-such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or
-to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and
-perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any
-doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be
-thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice
-censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not
-know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving
-them our assent." He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather
-discusses the subject under five heads: "First, lest I may seem to
-discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin
-language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,
-whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to
-appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through
-procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what
-judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how
-he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;
-fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an
-excommunication." Chassenee's method of investigation is not that of the
-philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them
-to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents
-and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances
-authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously
-avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply
-aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by
-civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these
-tribunals has been generally recognized.
-
-The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:
-the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,
-patristic theologians and homilists, mediaeval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,
-Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory
-the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of
-Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution
-and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out
-of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be
-produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason
-bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.
-It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter
-with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is
-at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.
-
-His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and
-ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was
-prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or
-originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather
-to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual
-faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their
-speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in
-dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured
-argumentations, as Tristram Shandy's Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of
-Corporal Trim, by "whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero." The
-examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity
-to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the
-jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge
-and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the
-so-called "wisdom of ages," renders him peculiarly liable to regard every
-act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.
-
-In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenee refers to the cursing of the
-serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all
-time; David's malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had
-neither rain nor dew; God's curse upon the city of Jericho, making its
-strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament
-the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, "Every tree that
-bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire," he
-interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of
-the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its
-delinquencies, and adds: "If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an
-irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it
-permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less" (_cum
-si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).
-
-An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the
-withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a
-similar process of reasoning: "It was punished, not for being without
-fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;
-not for being barren, but for being false." According to this exegesis, it
-was the telling of a wilful lie that "drew on it the curse." The guilty
-fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of
-the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: "Almost as soon as
-the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through
-all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart." As
-regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern
-divine and the mediaeval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the
-latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no
-infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due
-process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal
-forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert
-even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican
-hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the
-validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an
-unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong
-season, "for the time of figs was not yet."
-
-A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical
-inferences, which Chassenee is constantly deducing from his texts, is the
-use he makes of the passage in Virgil's first Georgic, in which the poet
-remarks that "no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for
-irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for
-birds," all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from
-the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to
-excommunicate them, since "no snares are stronger than the meshes of an
-anathema." Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill
-many pages of the famous lawyer's dissertation.
-
-Coming down to more recent times, Chassenee mentions several instances of
-the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the
-ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without
-the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus
-he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits
-tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The
-orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of
-Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed
-Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to
-interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451
-the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense
-number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the
-large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of
-food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective
-and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),
-received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of
-Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus
-videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed
-the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected
-heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls
-with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with
-coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed
-than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of
-Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the
-faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his
-head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the
-altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and
-it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into
-the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.
-Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had
-incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is
-also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a
-countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating
-priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,
-like Sennacherib's host, "all dead corpses." William, Abbot of St.
-Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon
-as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such
-quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis
-ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing
-of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a
-parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.
-11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in
-its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.
-The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the
-tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden
-frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The
-saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish
-chronicler, because the case was urgent and "no other remedy was at hand."
-Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of
-"deacons with fly-flaps," who, according to a contemporary writer, were
-appointed "to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth."
-
-The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its
-fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and
-its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be
-uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend
-goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon
-it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that
-the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with
-serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was
-ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was
-preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Fuessen in Bavaria, and from 1685
-to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz
-and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of
-rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of
-malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints'
-curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the
-inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a
-document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou
-in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain
-from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are
-to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from
-His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of
-Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory
-against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the
-same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of
-rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered
-processions to be made on St. Magnus' Day from the Church of St. Francis
-to Peter's Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was
-observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been
-superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of
-fasting and prayer.
-
-In his "First Counsel" Chassenee not only treats of methods of procedure,
-and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by
-the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the
-exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many
-legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of
-judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and
-canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical
-tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of
-blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and
-can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction
-in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.
-[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,
-licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam
-sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)
-_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. Sec. 5.] For this reason the Church never
-condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,
-gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under
-the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the
-prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish
-pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical
-character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of
-the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally
-the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted
-before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter
-was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed
-two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and
-who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word "conjurer"
-seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether
-priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,
-probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by
-conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.
-
-Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be
-decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be
-regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenee thinks that there is no necessity
-of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as
-lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if
-any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are
-entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he
-is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would
-have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call
-_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had
-been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the
-point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties
-and quiddities of mediaeval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly
-questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the
-eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so
-much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the
-age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of
-investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the
-ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology
-render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.
-
-Chassenee also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive
-purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon
-them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them
-from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that
-animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed
-with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that "things not
-allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect
-to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them." Thus a layman
-may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may
-seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In
-such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an
-irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back
-from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example
-from Holy Writ, where "Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,
-was rebuked by a she-ass."
-
-Chassenee endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical
-texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of
-zooe-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for
-the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was
-unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to
-other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower
-animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a
-well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in
-communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general
-welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by
-individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may
-require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit
-crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts
-by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.
-Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement
-upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible
-offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,
-summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly
-preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is
-not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a
-proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically
-applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.
-Chassenee insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed
-except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex
-expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle
-Paul, who declares that "sin is not imputed when there is no law." He
-appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole
-procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he
-lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the
-criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce
-of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of
-an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect
-accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve
-the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a
-single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the
-chain; everything must be "well-thought, well-said and well-done," not
-ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata
-hukhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the
-performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other
-kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be
-omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its
-power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence
-passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of
-conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial
-irregularity.
-
-Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the
-grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed
-that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his
-diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be
-made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to
-quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On
-the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The
-curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs
-were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and
-consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; "and if
-they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them
-with our anathema." In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on
-certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia
-animalia, Gallice urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid
-waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should
-disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor
-was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the
-aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more
-effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the
-payment of tithes. Chassenee, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its
-correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer
-for man's sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.
-
-The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain
-the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some
-insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated
-on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.
-The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charancon)
-known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different
-names, amblevin, beche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.
-
-Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before
-Francois Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the
-advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for
-the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both
-parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,
-dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with
-the following characteristic preamble: "Inasmuch as God, the supreme
-author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth
-fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of
-rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of
-insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be
-unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals
-now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more
-fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore
-pardon for our sins." Then follow instructions as to the manner in which
-the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine
-wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and
-undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with
-unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and
-charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on
-three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host
-to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the
-vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the
-second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the
-tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are
-required to take part in these religious exercises. A _proces-verbal_,
-signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully
-carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.
-
-About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the
-destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are
-recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum
-communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu
-amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of
-St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the
-commune, to M. Leon Menebrea, who printed them in the appendix to his
-volume: _De l'origine de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au
-moyen-age contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared
-originally in the twelfth tome of the _Memoires de la Societe Royale
-Academique de Savoie_.
-
-It may be proper to add that Menebrea's theory of "the spirit, in which
-these judgments against animals were given," is wholly untenable. He
-maintains that "these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol
-intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the
-people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of
-intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned
-supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress
-against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and
-all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably
-beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the
-masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If
-man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought
-he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity."
-
-This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and
-not a mediaeval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which
-prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,
-but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;
-neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here
-suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from
-originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will
-be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,
-and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in
-which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be
-considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really
-tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and
-thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of
-ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred
-and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their
-influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar
-and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.
-
-But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the
-case was laid before "his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of
-Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official" by the
-syndics and procurators, Francois Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in
-the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following
-statement and petition: "Formerly by virtue of divine services and
-earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid
-animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing
-incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it
-behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures
-as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the
-afore-mentioned syndics, Francois Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear
-anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another
-procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre
-Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe
-the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication."
-
-In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was
-appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario
-moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before
-the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th
-of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the
-declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not
-maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the
-course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients
-have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to
-excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the
-lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth
-bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,
-and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be
-fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl
-multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,
-had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and
-sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every
-thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for
-meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode
-in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right
-conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is
-absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law
-against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the
-impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the
-plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses
-as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests
-that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would
-do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,
-who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a
-fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of
-the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all
-further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge
-is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).
-
-The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when
-Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy
-replication, of which the defendants' advocate demanded a copy with due
-time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the
-26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or
-holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate
-of the commune, Francois Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,
-if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants' plea, argued
-that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to
-be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,
-indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d'etre_
-except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,
-inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist
-asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our
-opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held
-from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions
-formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The
-advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the
-document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the
-case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a
-rejoinder to the plaintiffs' replication, denying that the subordination
-of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,
-and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not
-even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject
-solely to natural law, "a law originating in the eternal reason and
-resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,
-since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of
-God." It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is
-not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.
-
-On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.
-Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be
-closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional
-statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant
-matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and
-declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems
-to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a
-new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.
-
-Meanwhile, in view of the law's long delay, other measures were taken for
-the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,
-1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the
-great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d'Amont, to which all hinds
-and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the
-church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the
-said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they
-might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the
-vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the
-advice of the plaintiffs' advocate, Francois Fay, and at the suggestion of
-the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart
-as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,
-reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,
-"without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals," and to make use of
-the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the
-service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working
-the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing
-detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the
-right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like
-distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with
-the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and
-dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The
-assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw
-up a conveyance of it "in good form and of perpetual validity," provided
-the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and
-inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an
-arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed "L. Prunier,
-curial," and stamped with the seal of the commune.
-
-But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to
-settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the
-litigation. On the 24th of July, an "Extract from the Register of the
-Curiality of St. Julien," containing the proceedings of the public
-meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of
-the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by
-the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on
-the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the
-vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of
-excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a
-copy of the _proces-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied
-with this request and adjourned the case till "the first juridical day
-after the harvest vacation," which fell on the 11th of August, and again
-by common consent till the 20th of the same month.
-
-At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade
-the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of
-troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was
-postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed
-men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of
-September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his
-clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile
-and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support
-of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected
-and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes
-repelli cum expensis_). The "egregious Petremand Bertrand," in behalf of
-the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that
-the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably
-adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,
-as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is
-ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his
-favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his
-decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the
-place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,
-and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.
-
-The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so
-long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the
-last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.
-Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of
-the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate
-and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought
-incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed
-worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which
-succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the
-legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.
-
-In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses
-incurred: "_pro visitatione III flor._," by which we are to understand
-three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place
-assigned to the insects; then "_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso
-processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in
-processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._," which may be
-summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,
-"_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._," three florins to the
-vicar, who acted as the bishop's official and did not receive a regular
-fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which
-follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the
-trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_
-Appendix A.)
-
-In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with
-great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right
-of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.
-This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not
-deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields
-and destroy the fruits of man's labour. The complainants were perfectly
-willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where
-they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to
-human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a
-moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these
-creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to
-another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot
-on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have
-been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.
-
-It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Pere Rochex:
-Gloire de l'Abbaye et Vallee de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded
-the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of
-Briancon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a
-desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably
-perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of
-its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall
-of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as
-completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights
-which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be
-bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of
-miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God's creatures was
-considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and
-other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediaeval
-jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers
-condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,
-and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some
-exceptionally brutal outrage.
-
-Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only
-anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no
-legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of
-the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only
-"waived" or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically
-from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the
-individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the
-word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from
-whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this
-relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in
-its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower
-animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the
-opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the
-Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traite des Monitoires, avec un
-Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not
-always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize
-this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of
-many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was
-corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,
-which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and
-regeneration.
-
-One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in
-prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man
-for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of
-the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away
-would be to fight against God (_s'en prendre a Dieu_). Under such
-circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress
-and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly
-to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the
-standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the
-argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic
-substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and
-fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediaeval
-horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of
-ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his
-own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded
-theological methods in the practical affairs of life.
-
-Thomas Aquinas, the "angelic doctor," in his _Summa Theologiae_ raises the
-query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum
-liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,
-that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are
-susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other
-words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and
-insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter
-are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably
-affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man's
-subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who
-made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore
-no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,
-because he took from his mother's womb the taint of original sin; David
-cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with
-the blood of "the beauty of Israel"; in like manner the Lord sends locusts
-and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are
-intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes
-to punish.
-
-It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediaeval jurisprudents that no animal
-devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal
-injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the
-great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower
-animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by
-him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would
-be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.
-merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and
-therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).
-There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication
-or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the
-lower animals are satellites of Satan "instigated by the powers of hell
-and therefore proper to be cursed," as the Doctor angelicus puts it.
-Chassenee refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. Sec. 75),
-and adds "the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as
-such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the
-devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment." This
-notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the
-fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or
-symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,
-the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the
-scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.
-
-But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the
-contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine
-perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne
-Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon
-records, was "printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace
-one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,"
-King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason
-brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,
-"several fine moralities," and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities
-of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes
-doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet
-beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as
-
- "Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind."
-
-According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks
-represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of
-religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends
-of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are
-concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and
-to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross
-between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten
-commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten
-fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual
-miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.
-
-Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the
-Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar
-adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number
-seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of
-offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and
-the fox, which is described as follows: "Reynard is a beast of small size,
-with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage
-is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,
-straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other
-beasts and exceedingly malicious." "We are all," adds Queen Reason in a
-moralizing strain, "more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,
-whose influence is now-a-days quite extended." Among birds the raven is
-pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is
-a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,
-the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.
-
-This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in
-the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging
-either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of
-Angro-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these
-hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the
-trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,
-_hukhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil
-thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhukhta_,
-_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally
-suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose
-between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his
-own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare
-of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no
-inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do
-not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,
-but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.
-As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates
-itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the
-globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the
-influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general
-increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine
-which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal
-strife of these "mighty opposites," the vicious are the allies of the
-devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own
-salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being
-fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services
-in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and
-the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human
-aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour
-of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is
-difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that
-evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,
-but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate
-it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral
-obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far
-more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human
-imitation than that "dreadful idealization of wickedness" which is called
-God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by
-the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in
-virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe
-and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in
-subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of
-lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been
-degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to
-be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of
-snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed
-to have been produced by Angro-mainyush.
-
-Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the
-manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather
-as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an
-intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the
-full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the
-Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with
-what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the
-best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory
-result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete
-actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the
-defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable
-human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all
-spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to
-conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild
-beast
-
- "Red in tooth and claw
- With ravin,"
-
-that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent
-intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only
-rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox
-Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of
-Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the
-righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute
-supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the
-
- "One far-off divine event,
- To which the whole creation moves,"
-
-consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of
-being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select
-few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of
-its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed
-to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.
-
-Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the
-incompleteness of Nature's handiwork, which it is the function of art and
-culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and
-contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious
-productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and
-develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling
-all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has
-attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and
-struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a
-slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able
-gradually to
-
- "Move upward, working out the beast,
- And let the ape and tiger die."
-
-The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more
-efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same
-time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new
-evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it
-mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies
-stimulates Angromainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who
-convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of
-diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States
-to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,
-not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and
-bountiful spirit (_spento mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation
-and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The
-power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism
-often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most
-persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy
-of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying
-a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk
-industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to
-ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the
-potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science
-for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to
-reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator
-and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these
-that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to
-him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable
-evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd
-and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of
-the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world
-from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and
-repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the
-burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of
-an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own
-good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good
-thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each
-individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful
-and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer's)
-bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul
-harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.
-
-But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that
-certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,
-and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine
-were derived by mediaeval writers from biblical and classical sources. A
-favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given
-over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,
-while his hair grew like eagles' feathers and his nails like birds'
-claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn
-from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally
-be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, "dire
-chimeras" and other "delicate monsters," there were hybrids like the
-semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,
-Daedalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actaeon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Maera
-a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a
-roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene
-owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse
-Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of
-Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the
-prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are
-adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of
-evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.
-
-Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by
-a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and
-the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were
-in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.
-Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had
-the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately
-disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to
-this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which
-it was directed: "I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the
-living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,
-by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and
-parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed
-thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or
-phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with
-exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art
-sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human
-habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if
-any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief
-from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be
-driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,
-locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible
-and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought." In the
-prayers which follow, the water is entreated to "preserve the fruits of
-the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits."
-
-This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit
-priest, Pere Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le
-Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed
-to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author
-refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian
-theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we
-may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a
-Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the
-queer dedicatory title: "_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis
-ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_," and printed in 1554,
-nearly a century before the publication of Descartes' _Meditationes de
-prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in
-the history of philosophy.
-
-If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the
-Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ
-from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both
-inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.
-Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer
-as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his
-caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical
-system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a
-machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and
-passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself
-possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other
-persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to
-be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations
-of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin
-to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a
-spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human
-soul.
-
-But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the
-Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and
-necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future
-life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and
-blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a
-heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man
-over a beast as an object of God's mercy or wrath is lost. "Beasts, in
-that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of
-which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion." The
-only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual
-sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is
-to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.
-
-Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his
-satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their
-primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but
-the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the
-standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of
-Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed
-their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as
-soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight
-to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is
-not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not
-enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is
-supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ
-declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say
-unto them on his left hand, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting
-fire prepared for the devil and his angels." Here it is not stated that
-the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been "prepared" for
-them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet
-in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two "exceeding
-fierce" demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, "Art thou
-come hither to torment us before the time?" This question has no
-significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such
-living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their
-torment should come on the last day. Pere Bougeant is furthermore of the
-opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore
-abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already
-in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently
-down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it
-to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide
-by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still
-more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the
-Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that
-the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in
-everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.
-These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the
-irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are
-meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody
-and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which
-divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the
-teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.
-
-Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in
-the meantime. Some of them are engaged in "going to and fro in the earth
-and walking up and down in it," in order to spy out and take advantage of
-human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men
-and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe
-temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the
-different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in
-the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of
-"science falsely so called." Other devils enter into living human bodies
-and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others
-still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and
-wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by
-the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being
-baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original
-sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born
-and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who
-combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially
-appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,
-as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which
-Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was
-christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or
-through a sponsor, if an infant, to "forsake the devil and all his works."
-These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated
-in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic
-potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of
-exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between
-the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the
-former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising
-power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches
-finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell
-into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the
-stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in
-principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.
-
-The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and
-cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their
-expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum
-S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a
-chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus
-juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all
-so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms
-of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies
-or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body
-may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his
-infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is
-constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical
-derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and
-capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is
-to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed
-and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and
-conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be
-written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the
-parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with
-these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to
-be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against
-counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the
-seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to
-Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there
-can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the
-priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the
-damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs
-so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and
-religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of
-mankind.
-
-The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone
-vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,
-who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and
-more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his
-predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of
-_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any
-mediaeval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat
-this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and
-other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of
-casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale
-Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described
-and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure
-printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
-Massgabe der roemischen Benediktionale_.
-
-That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from
-the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a
-devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of "a maiden of angelic beauty" in
-Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be
-one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled
-Parson Stoecker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the
-name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: "O, that Jew! Didn't
-he have to drink gall?" When commanded to depart, he begged that he might
-go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade
-him "go to hell," which he forthwith did, "moaning as he went, in
-melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,
-'Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!' The voice was so sad,"
-adds the bishop, "that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we
-not known that it was the devil."
-
-Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome
-became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by
-Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,
-attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,
-Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most
-important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the
-first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and
-17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the
-infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of
-Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,
-causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy
-in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, "Every knee in
-heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus," the fallen "Son
-of the Morning" retorted, "Not Luci, not Luci--never!"
-
-It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that
-have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the
-exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of
-1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at
-Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,
-1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstaett. In the
-latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist
-himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:
-"Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that
-he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will
-believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.
-As for myself I have the authority of two bishops." In a pamphlet on this
-subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in
-Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring
-that diabolical possession "is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the
-traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal
-testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice
-of the Catholic Church." Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and
-authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is
-divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is
-never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.
-
-Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is
-gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast
-low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and
-elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural
-population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living
-in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the
-reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and
-murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in
-the "metaphysical aid" of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and
-veterinary skill.
-
-Unfortunately this belief is not confined to Catholics and boors, but is
-held by Protestants, who are considered persons of education and superior
-culture. Dr. Lyman Abbott asserted in a sermon preached in Plymouth
-Church, that "what we call the impulses of our lower nature are the
-whispered suggestions of fiend-like natures, watching for our fall and
-exultant if they can accomplish it." But while affirming that "evil
-spirits exercise an influence over mankind," and that cranks like Guiteau,
-the assassin of President Garfield, are diabolically possessed, the
-reverend divine would hardly risk his reputation for sanity by attempting
-to exorcise the supposed demon. The Catholic priest holds the same view,
-but has the courage of his convictions and goes solemnly to work with
-bell, book and candle to effect the expulsion of the indwelling fiend.
-
-The fact that such methods of healing are sometimes successful is adduced
-as conclusive proof of their miraculous character; but this inference is
-wholly incorrect. Professor Dr. Hoppe, in an essay on _Der Teufels- und
-Geisterglaube und die psychologische Erklaerung des Besessenseins_
-(_Allgemeine Zeitschrift fuer Psychiatrie_, Bd. LV. p. 290), gives a
-psychological explanation of these puzzling phenomena. "The priest," he
-says, "exerts a salutary influence upon the brain through the respect and
-dignity which he inspires, just as Christ in his day wrought upon those
-who were sick and possessed with devils." Indeed, it is expressly stated
-by the evangelist that Jesus did not attempt to do wonderful works among
-people who did not believe. According to this theory the exorcism effects
-a cure by its powerful action on the imagination, just as there are
-frequent ailments, for which a wise physician administers bread pills and
-a weak solution of powdered sugar as the safest and best medicaments.
-Professor Hoppe, therefore, approves of "priestly conjurations for the
-expulsion of devils as a psychical means of healing," and thinks that the
-more ceremoniously the rite can be performed in the presence of grave and
-venerable witnesses, the more effective it will be. This opinion is
-endorsed by a Catholic priest, Friedrich Jaskowski, in a pamphlet entitled
-_Der Trierer Rock und seine Patienten vom Jahre 1891_ (Saarbruecken: Carl
-Schmidtke, 1894). The author belongs to the diocese of Trier and is
-therefore under the jurisdiction of the bishop, Dr. Felix Korum, whose
-statements concerning the miracles wrought and the evidences of divine
-mercy manifested during the exhibition of the "holy coat" in 1891 he
-courageously reviews and conclusively refutes. The bishop had printed what
-he called "documentary proofs," consisting of certificates issued by
-obscure curates and country doctors, that certain persons suffering
-chiefly from diseases of the nervous system had been healed, and sought to
-discover in these cures the working of divine agencies. Jaskowski shows
-that in several instances the persons said to have found relief died
-shortly afterwards, and maintains that where cures actually occurred they
-"were not due to a miracle or any direct interference of God with the
-established order of things, but happened in a purely natural manner." He
-quotes the late Professor Charcot, Dr. Forel, and other neuropathologists
-to establish the fact that hetero-suggestion emanating from a physician or
-priest, or auto-suggestion originating in the person's own mind, may
-often be the most effective remedy for neurotic disorders of every kind.
-In auto-suggestion the patient is possessed with the fixed idea that the
-doing of a certain thing, which may be in itself absolutely indifferent,
-will afford relief. As an example of this faith-cure Jaskowski refers to
-the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood, and approaching Jesus
-said within herself: "If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole."
-This is precisely the position taken by Jesus himself, who turned to the
-woman and said: "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee
-whole." Jaskowski also quotes the declaration of the evangelist referred
-to above, that in a certain place the people's lack of faith prevented
-Jesus from doing many wondrous works, and does not deny that on this
-principle, which is now recognized by the most eminent physicians, some
-few of the hundreds of pilgrims may have been restored to health by
-touching the holy coat of Trier; and there is no doubt that the popular
-belief in Bishop Korum's assertion that it is the same garment which Jesus
-wore and the woman touched, would greatly increase its healing efficacy
-through the force of auto-suggestion (see my article on "Recent
-Recrudescence of Superstition" in Appleton's _Popular Science Monthly_ for
-Oct. 1895, pp. 762-66).
-
-The Bishop of Bamberg in Bavaria has been stigmatized as a hypocrite
-because he sends the infirm of his flock on a pilgrimage to Lourdes or
-Laas or some other holy shrine, while he prefers for himself the profane
-waters of Karlsbad or Kissingen. But in so doing he is not guilty of any
-inconsistency, since a journey to sacred places and contact with sacred
-relics would not act upon him with the same force as upon the ignorant and
-superstitious masses of his diocese. His conduct only evinces his
-disbelief in the supernatural character of the remedies he prescribes. The
-distinguished French physician, Professor Charcot, as already mentioned,
-recognized the curative power of faith under certain circumstances, and
-occasionally found it eminently successful in hysterical and other purely
-nervous affections. In some cases he did not hesitate to prescribe a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of any saint for whom the patient may have had a
-peculiar reverence; but in no instance in his experience did faith or
-exorcism or hagiolatry heal an organic disease, set a dislocated joint or
-restore an amputated limb. What Falstaff says of honour is equally true of
-faith, it "hath no skill in surgery."
-
-But to return from this digression, Pere Bougeant's theory of the
-diabolical possession of pagans and unbaptized persons would provide for
-comparatively few devils, and the gradual diffusion of Christianity would
-constantly diminish the supply of human beings available as their proper
-habitations. The ultimate conversion of the whole world and the custom of
-baptizing infants as soon as they are born would, therefore, produce
-serious domiciliary destitution and distress among the evil spirits and
-set immense numbers of them hopelessly adrift as vagabonds, and thus
-create an extremely undesirable diabolical proletariat. This difficulty is
-avoided by assuming that the vast majority of devils are incarnate in the
-billions of beasts of all kinds, which dwell upon the earth or fly in the
-air or fill the waters of the rivers and the seas. This hypothesis, he
-adds, "enables me to ascribe to the lower animals thought, knowledge,
-feeling, and a spiritual principle or soul without running counter to the
-truths of religion. Indeed, so far from being astonished at their
-manifestations of intelligence, foresight, memory and reason, I am rather
-surprised that they do not display these qualities in a higher degree,
-since their soul is probably far more perfect than ours. Their defects
-are, as I have discovered, owing to the fact that in brute as in us, the
-mind works through material organs, and inasmuch as these organs are
-grosser and less perfect in the lower animals than in man, it follows that
-their exhibitions of intelligence, their thoughts and all their mental
-operations must be less perfect; and, if these proud spirits are conscious
-of their condition, how humiliating it must be for them to see themselves
-thus embruted! Whether they are conscious of it or not, this deep
-degradation is the first act of God's vengeance executed on his foes. It
-is a foretaste of hell."
-
-Only by such an assumption, as our author proceeds to show, is it possible
-to justify the ways of man to the lower animals and to reconcile his cruel
-treatment of them with the goodness of an all-wise and all-powerful maker
-and ruler of the universe. For this reason, he goes on to explain, the
-Christian Church has never deemed it a duty to take the lower animals
-under its protection or to inculcate ordinary natural kindness towards
-them. Hence in countries, like Italy and Spain, where the influence of
-Catholicism has been supreme for centuries, not only are wild birds and
-beasts of chase relentlessly slaughtered and exterminated, but even useful
-domestic animals, asses, sumpter-mules and pack-horses, are subjected to a
-supererogation of suffering at the hands of ruthless man. As the pious
-Parsi conscientiously comes up to the help of Ahuramazda against the
-malevolent Angro-mainyush by killing as many as possible of the creatures
-which the latter has made, so the good Catholic becomes an efficient
-co-worker with God by maltreating brutes and thus aiding the Almighty in
-punishing the devils, of which they are the visible and bruisable forms.
-Whatever pain is inflicted is felt, not by the physical organism, but by
-the animated spirit. It is the embodied demon that really suffers, howling
-in the beaten dog and squealing in the butchered pig.
-
-There are doubtless many persons of tender susceptibilities, who cannot
-bear to think that the animals, whose daily companionship we enjoy, the
-parrot we feed with sugar, the pretty pug we caress and the noble horse,
-which ministers to our comfort and convenience, are nothing but devils
-predestined to everlasting torture. But these purely sentimental
-considerations are of no weight in the scale of reason. "What matters it,"
-replies the Jesuit Father, "whether it is a devil or another kind of
-creature that is in our service or contributes to our amusement? For my
-part, this idea pleases rather than repels me; and I recognize with
-gratitude the beneficence of the Creator in having provided me with so
-many little devils for my use and entertainment. If it be said that these
-poor creatures, which we have learned to love and so fondly cherish, are
-fore-ordained to eternal torments, I can only adore the decrees of God,
-but do not hold myself responsible for the terrible sentence; I leave the
-execution of the dread decision to the sovereign judge and continue to
-live with my little devils, as I live pleasantly with a multitude of
-persons, of whom, according to the teachings of our holy religion, the
-great majority will be damned." The crafty disciple of Loyola, elusive of
-disagreeable deductions, is content to accept the poodle in its phenomenal
-form and to make the most of it, without troubling himself about "des
-Pudels Kern."
-
-This doctrine, he thinks, is amply illustrated and confirmed by an appeal
-to the consentient opinion of mankind or the argument from universal
-belief, which has been so often and so effectively urged in proof of the
-existence of God. If the maxim _universitas non delinquit_ has the same
-validity in the province of philosophy as in that of law, then we are
-justified in assuming that the whole human race cannot go wrong even in
-purely metaphysical speculation and that unanimity in error is a
-psychological impossibility. The criterion of truth, _quod semper, quod
-ubique, quod ab omnibus_, by which the Roman hierarchy is willing to have
-its claims to ecclesiastical catholicity and doctrinal orthodoxy tested,
-is confined to Christendom in its application and does not consider the
-views of persons outside of the body of believers. In the question under
-discussion the argument is not subject to such limitations, but gathers
-testimony from all races and religions, showing that there is not a
-civilized nation or savage tribe on the face of the earth, which does not
-regard or has not regarded the lower animals as embodiments of evil
-spirits and sought to propitiate them. That "the devil is an ass" is a
-truth so palpable that it has passed into a proverb. Baal-zebub means
-fly-god; and the Christian Satan betrays his presence by the cloven foot
-of the goat or the solid hoof of the horse. In folk-lore, which is the
-_debris_ of exploded mythologies adrift on the stream of popular
-tradition, cats, dogs, otters, apes, ravens, blackcocks, capercailzies,
-rabbits, hedgehogs, wolves, were-wolves, foxes, polecats, swine, serpents,
-toads, and countless varieties of insects, reptiles and vermin figure as
-incarnations and instruments of the devil; and Mephistopheles reveals
-himself to Faust as
-
- "Der Herr der Ratten und der Maeuse,
- Der Fliegen, Froesche, Wanzen, Laeuse."
-
- "The Lord of rats and of the mice,
- Of flies and frogs, bed-bugs and lice."
-
-The worship of animals originates in the belief that they are embodiments
-of devils, so that zooelatry, which holds such a prominent place in
-primitive religions, is only a specific form of demonolatry. The objection
-that a flea or a fly, a mite or a mosquito is too small a creature to
-furnish fit lodgment for a demon, Father Bougeant dismisses with an
-indulgent smile and disparaging shrug as implying a gross misconception of
-the nature and properties of spirit, which is without extension or
-dimension and therefore capable of animating the most diminutive particle
-of organized matter. Large and little are purely relative terms. God, he
-says, could have made man as small as the tiniest puceron without any
-decrease of his spiritual powers. "It is, therefore, no more difficult to
-believe that a devil may be incorporated in the delicate body of a gnat
-than in the huge bulk of an elephant." The size of the physical
-habitation, in which spirits take up their temporary abode, is a thing of
-no consequence. In fact, devils in the forms of gnats and tiny insects
-were thought to be especially dangerous, since one might swallow them
-unawares and thus become diabolically possessed. The demon, liberated by
-the death and dissolution of the insect, was supposed to make a tenement
-of the unfortunate person's stomach, producing gripes and playing
-ventriloquous tricks. Thus it is recorded in the _Dies Caniculuares_ of
-Majolus (Meyer: _Der Aberglaube des Mittelalters_, p. 296-7) that a young
-maiden in the Erzgebirge near Joachimsthal, in 1559, swallowed a fly,
-while drinking beer. The evil spirit, incarnate in the fly, took
-possession of the maiden and began to speak out of her, thus attracting
-crowds of people, who put questions to the devil and tried to drive him
-out by prayers, in which the unhappy girl sometimes joined, greatly to her
-discomfort, since the devil waxed exceeding wroth and unruly and caused
-her much suffering, whenever she uttered the name of Christ. Finally the
-parish priest had her brought into the church, where he succeeded with
-considerable difficulty in exorcising her. The stubborn demon resisted for
-two years all efforts to cast him out; he even tried to compromise with
-the girl, promising to be content with a finger nail or a single hair of
-her head, but she declined all overtures, and he was at last expelled by
-means of a potent conjuration, which lasted from midnight till midday.
-
-As the human soul is released by death, so the extinction of life in any
-animal sets its devil free, who, instead of entering upon a spiritual
-state of existence, goes into the egg or embryo of another animal and
-resumes his penal bondage to the flesh. "Thus a devil, after having been a
-cat or a goat, may pass, not by choice, but by constraint, into the embryo
-of a bird, a fish or a butterfly. Happy are those who make a lucky hit and
-become household pets, instead of beasts of burden or of slaughter. The
-lottery of destiny bars them the right of voluntary choosing." The
-doctrine of transmigration, continues our author, "which Pythagoras taught
-of yore and some Indian sages hold to-day, is untenable in its application
-to men and contrary to religion, but it fits admirably into the system
-already set forth concerning the nature of beasts, and shocks neither our
-faith nor our reason." Furthermore, it explains why "all species of
-animals produce many more eggs or embryos than are necessary to propagate
-their kind and to provide for a normal increase." Of the millions of
-germs, of which "great creating nature" is so prolific, comparatively few
-ever develop into living creatures; only those which are vivified by a
-devil are evolved into complete organisms; the others perish. This seeming
-superfluity and waste can be most easily reconciled with the careful
-economy and wise frugality of nature by viewing it as a manifestation of
-the bountiful and beneficent providence of God in preventing "any lack of
-occupation or abode on the part of the devils," which are being constantly
-disembodied and re-embodied. "This accounts for the prodigious clouds of
-locusts and countless hosts of caterpillars, which suddenly desolate our
-fields and gardens. The cause of these astonishing multiplications has
-been sought in cold, heat, rain and wind, but the real reason is that, at
-the time of their appearance, extraordinary quantities of animals have
-died or their embryos been destroyed, so that the devils that animated
-them were compelled to avail themselves at once of whatever species they
-found most ready to receive them, which would naturally be the
-superabundant eggs of insects." The more profoundly this subject is
-investigated, he concludes, and the more light our observations and
-researches throw upon it from all sides, the more probable does the
-hypothesis here suggested in explanation of the puzzling phenomena of
-animal life and intelligence appear.
-
-Father Bougeant calls his lucubration "a new system of philosophy"; but
-this is not strictly true. He has only given a fuller and more facetious
-exposition of a doctrine taught by many of the greatest lights of the
-Catholic Church, among others by Thomas Aquinas, whose authority as a
-thinker Pope Leo XIII. distinctly recognized and earnestly sought to
-restore to its former prestige. Bougeant's ingenious dissertation has a
-vein of irony or at least a strain of jocundity in it, approaching at
-times so perilously near the fatal brink of persiflage, that one cannot
-help surmising an intention to render the whole thing ridiculous in a
-witty and underhand way eminently compatible with Jesuitical habits of
-mind; but whether serious or satirical, his treatise is an excellent
-example and illustration of the kind of dialectic hair-splitting and
-syllogistic rubbish, which passed for reasoning in the early and middle
-ages of the Christian era, and which the greatest scholars and acutest
-intellects of those days fondly indulged in and seem to have been fully
-satisfied with. Here, too, we come upon the metaphysical and theological
-groundwork, upon which was reared by a strictly logical process a vast
-superstructure of ecclesiastical excommunication and criminal prosecution
-against bugs and beasts. He protests with never-tiring and needless
-iteration his absolute devotion to the precepts of religion; indeed, like
-the lady in the play, he "protests too much, methinks." In all humbleness
-and submission he bows to the authority of the Church, and would not touch
-the ark of the covenant even with the tip of his finger, but his easy
-acquiescence has an air of perfunctoriness, and in his assenting lips
-there lurks a secret, semi-sarcastic leer, which casts suspicion on his
-words and looks like poking fun at the principles he professes and turning
-them into raillery.
-
-Indeed, such covert derision would have been a suitable way of ridiculing
-the gross popular superstition of his time, which saw a diabolical
-incarnation in every unfamiliar form of animal life. During the latter
-half of the sixteenth century a Swiss naturalist named Thurneysser, who
-held the position of physician in ordinary to the Elector Johann Georg von
-Brandenburg, kept some scorpions bottled in olive oil, which were feared
-by the common people as terrible devils endowed with magic power
-(_fuerchterliche Zauberteufel_). Thurneysser presented also to Basel, his
-native city, a large elk, which had been given to him by Prince Radziwil;
-but the good Baselers looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous
-demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by
-feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.
-
-A distinguished Spanish theologian of the sixteenth century, Martin
-Azpilcueta, commonly known as Dr. Navarre, refers, in his work on
-excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against
-certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of
-Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as
-"fish or cacodemons" (_pisces seu cacodemones_), and maintains that they
-are subject to anathematization, not as fish, but only as devils. In his
-Five Counsels and other tractates on this subject (Opera, Lyons, 1589;
-reprinted at Venice, 1601-2, and at Cologne, 1616) he often takes issue
-with Chassenee on minor points, but the French jurist and the Spanish
-divine agree on the main question.
-
-In this connection it may be a matter of interest to add, that a German
-neuropathologist of our own day, Herr von Bodelschwingh, ascribes epilepsy
-to what he calls "demonic infection" due to the presence of the _bacillus
-infernalis_ in the blood of those who are subject to this disease. The
-microbe, to which the jocose scientist has been pleased to give this name,
-differs from all other bacilli hitherto discovered in having two horns and
-a tail, although the most powerful lenses have not yet revealed any traces
-of a cloven foot. An additional indication of its infernal qualities is
-the fact that it liquefies the gelatine, with which it comes in contact,
-and turns it black, emitting at the same time a pestilential stench.
-Doubtless this discovery will be hailed by theologians as a striking
-confirmation of divine revelation by modern science, proving that our
-forefathers were right in attributing the falling-sickness to diabolical
-agencies. We know now that it was a legion of _bacilli infernales_ which
-went out of the tomb-haunting man into the Gadarene swine and drove them
-tumultuously over a precipice into the sea. In fact, who can tell what
-microbes really are! Pere Bougeant would certainly have regarded them as
-nothing less than microscopic devils.
-
-The Savoyan jurist, Gaspard Bailly, in the second part of the disquisition
-entitled _Traite des Monitoires_, already mentioned, treats "Of the
-Excellence of Monitories" and discusses the main points touching the
-criminal prosecution and punishment of insects. He begins by saying that
-"one should not contemn monitories (a general term for anathemas, bans and
-excommunications), seeing that they are matters of great importance,
-inasmuch as they bear with them the deadliest sword, wielded by our holy
-mother, the Church, to wit, the power of excommunication, which cutteth
-the dry wood and the green, sparing neither the quick nor the dead, and
-smiting not only rational beings, but turning its edge also against
-irrational creatures; since it hath been shown at sundry times and in
-divers places, that worms and insects, which were devouring the fruits of
-the earth, have been excommunicated and, in obedience to the commands of
-the Church, have withdrawn from the cultivated fields to the places
-prescribed by the bishop who had been appointed to adjudge and to adjure
-them."
-
-M. Bailly then cites numerous instances of this kind, in which a writer on
-logic would find ample illustrations of the fallacy known as _post hoc,
-ergo propter hoc_. Thus in the latter half of the fifteenth century,
-during the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, a plague of
-locusts threatened the province of Mantua in Northern Italy with famine,
-but were dispersed by excommunication. He quotes some florid lines from
-the poet Altiat descriptive of these devastating swarms, which "came,
-after so many other woes, under the leadership of Eurus (_i.e._ brought by
-the east wind), more destructive than the hordes of Attila or the camps of
-Corsicans, devouring the hay, the millet and the corn, and leaving only
-vain wishes, where the hopes of August stood." Again in 1541, a cloud of
-locusts fell upon Lombardy, and by destroying the crops, caused many
-persons to perish with hunger. These insects "were as long as a man's
-finger, with large heads and bellies filled with vileness; and when dead
-they infected the air and gave forth a stench, which even carrion kites
-and carnivorous beasts could not endure." Another instance is given, in
-which swarms of four-winged insects came from Tartary, identified in the
-popular mind with Tartarus, obscuring the sun in their flight and covering
-the plains of Poland a cubit deep. In the year 1338, on St. Bartholomew's
-Day, these creatures began to devastate the region round Botzen in the
-Tyrol, consuming the crops and laying eggs and leaving a numerous progeny,
-which seemed destined to continue the work of destruction indefinitely. A
-prosecution was therefore instituted against them before the
-ecclesiastical court at Kaltern, a large market-town about ten miles south
-of Botzen, then as now famous for its wines, and the parish priest
-instructed to proceed against them with the sentence of excommunication in
-accordance with the verdict of the tribunal. This he did by the solemn
-ceremony of "inch of candle," and anathematized them "in the name of the
-Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost." Owing to the sins of the
-people and their remissness in the matter of tithes the devouring insects
-resisted for a time the power of the Church, but finally disappeared.
-Under the reign of Lotharius II., early in the twelfth century, enormous
-quantities of locusts, "having six wings with two teeth harder than flint"
-and "darkening the sky and whitening the air like a snowstorm," laid waste
-the most fertile provinces of France. Many of them perished in the rivers
-and the sea, and being washed ashore sent forth a putrescent smell and
-produced a fearful pestilence. Precisely the same phenomenon, with like
-disastrous results, is described by St. Augustine in the last book of _De
-Civitate Dei_ as having occurred in Africa and caused the death of 800,000
-persons.
-
-In the majority of cases adduced there is no evidence that the Church
-intervened at all with its fulminations, and, even when the anathema was
-pronounced, the insects appear to have departed of their own free-will
-after having eaten up every green thing and reduced the inhabitants to
-the verge of starvation; and yet M. Bailly, supposed to be a man of
-judicial mind, disciplined by study, accustomed to reason and to know what
-sound reasoning is, goes on giving accounts of such scourges, as though
-they proved in some mysterious way the effectiveness of ecclesiastical
-excommunications and formed a cumulative argument in support of such
-claims.
-
-The most important portion of M. Bailly's work is that in which he shows
-how actions of this kind should be brought and conducted, with specimens
-of plaints, pleas, replications, rejoinders, and decisions. First in order
-comes the petition of the inhabitants seeking redress (_requeste des
-habitans_), which is followed in regular succession by the declaration or
-plea of the inhabitants (_plaidoyer des habitans_), the defensive
-allegation or plea for the insects (_plaidoyer pour les insectes_), the
-replication of the inhabitants (_replique des habitans_), the rejoinder of
-the defendant (_replique du defendeur_), the conclusions of the bishop's
-proctor (_conclusions du procureur episcopal_), and the sentence of the
-ecclesiastical judge (_sentence du juge d'eglise_), which is solemnly
-pronounced in Latin. The pleadings on both sides are delivered in French
-and richly interlarded with classical allusions and Latin quotations,
-being even more heavily weighted with the spoils of erudition than the set
-speech of a member of the British Parliament.
-
-The following abridgment of the plea, in which the prosecuting attorney
-sets forth the cause of complaint, is a fair specimen of the forensic
-eloquence displayed on such occasions:
-
-"Gentlemen, these poor people on their knees and with tearful eyes, appeal
-to your sense of justice, as the inhabitants of the islands Majorica and
-Minorica formerly sent an embassy to Augustus Caesar, praying him for a
-cohort of soldiers to exterminate the rabbits, which were burrowing in
-their fields and consuming their crops. In the power of excommunication
-you have a weapon more effective than any wielded by that emperor to save
-these poor suppliants from impending famine produced by the ravages of
-little beasts, which spare neither the corn nor the vines, ravages like
-those of the boar that laid waste the environs of Calydon, as related by
-Homer in the first book of the _Iliad_, or those of the foxes sent by
-Themis to Thebes, which destroyed the fruits of the earth and the cattle
-and assailed even the husbandmen themselves. You know how great are the
-evils which famine brings with it, and you have too much kindness and
-compassion to permit my clients to be involved in such distress, thus
-constraining them to perpetrate cruel and unlawful deeds; _nec enim
-rationem patitur, nec ulla aequitate mitigatur, nec prece ulla flectitur
-esuriens populus_: for a starving people is not amenable to reason, nor
-tempered by equity, nor moved by any prayer. Witness the mothers, of whom
-it is recorded in the Fourth Book of the Kings, that they ate their own
-children, the one saying to the other: 'Give thy son that we may eat him
-to-day, and we will eat my son tomorrow.'" The advocate then discourses at
-length of the horrors of hunger and its disastrous effects upon the
-individual and the community, lugging in what Milton calls a "horse-load
-of citations" from Arianus Marcellinus, Ovid and other Latin prosaists and
-poets, introduces an utterly irrelevant allusion to Joshua and the crafty
-Gibeonites, and concludes as follows: "The full reports received as the
-result of an examination of the fields, made at your command, suffice for
-your information concerning the damage done by these animals. It remains,
-therefore, after complying with the usual forms, only to adjudicate upon
-the case in accordance with the facts stated in the Petition of the
-Plaintiffs, which is right and reasonable, and, to this effect, to enjoin
-these animals from continuing their devastations, ordering them to quit
-the aforesaid fields and to withdraw to the place assigned them,
-pronouncing the necessary anathemas and execrations prescribed by our Holy
-Mother, the Church, for which your petitioners do ever pray."
-
-It is doubtful whether any speaking for Buncombe in the halls of Congress
-or any spouting of an ignorant bumpkin in the moot-court of an American
-law-school ever produced such a rhetorical hotchpotch of "matter and
-impertinency mixed" as the earnest plea, of which the above is a brief
-abstract.
-
-Rather more to the point, but equally overburdened with legal lore and
-literary pedantry, is the rejoinder of the counsel for the insects:
-
-"Gentlemen, inasmuch as you have chosen me to defend these little beasts
-(_bestioles_), I shall, an it please you, endeavour to right them and to
-show that the manner of proceeding against them is invalid and void. I
-confess that I am greatly astonished at the treatment they have been
-subjected to and at the charges brought against them, as though they had
-committed some crime. Thus information has been procured touching the
-damage said to have been done by them; they have been summoned to appear
-before this court to answer for their conduct, and, since they are
-notoriously dumb, the judge, wishing that they should not suffer wrong on
-account of this defect, has appointed an advocate to speak in their behalf
-and to set forth in conformity with right and justice the reasons, which
-they themselves are unable to allege.
-
-"Since you have permitted me to appear in defence of these poor animals, I
-will state, in the first place, that the summons served on them is null
-and void, having been issued against beasts, which cannot and ought not to
-be cited before this judgment seat, inasmuch as such a procedure implies
-that the parties summoned are endowed with reason and volition and are
-therefore capable of committing crime. That this is not the case with
-these creatures is clear from the paragraph _Si quadrupes_, etc., in the
-first book of the Pandects, where we find these words: _Nec enim potest
-animal injuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret_.
-
-"The second ground, on which I base the defence of my clients, is that no
-one can be judicially summoned without cause, and whoever has had such a
-summons served renders himself liable to the penalty prescribed by the
-statute _De poen. tem. litig._ As regards these animals there is no _causa
-justa litigandi_; they are not bound in any manner, _non tenentur ex
-contractu_, being incompetent to make contracts or to enter into any
-compact or covenant whatsoever, _neque ex quasi contractu_, _neque ex
-stipulatione_, _neque ex pacto_, and still less _ex delicto seu quasi_,
-can there be any question of a delict or any semblance thereof, since, as
-has just been shown, the rational faculties essential to the capability of
-committing criminal actions are wanting.
-
-"Furthermore, it is illicit to do that which is nugatory and of non-effect
-(_qui ne porte coup_); in this respect justice is like nature, which, as
-the philosopher affirms, does nothing _mal a propos_ or in vain: _Deus
-enim et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Now I leave it to you to decide
-whether anything could be more futile than to summon these irrational
-creatures, which can neither speak for themselves, nor appoint proxies to
-defend their cause; still less are they able to present memorials stating
-grounds of their justification. If then, as I have shown, the summons,
-which is the basis of all judicial action, is null and void, the
-proceedings dependent upon it will not be able to stand: _cum enim
-principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae consequuntur locum
-habent_."
-
-The counsel for the defence rests his argument, of which the extract just
-given may suffice as a sample, upon the irrationality and consequent
-irresponsibility of his clients. For this reason he maintains that the
-judge cannot appoint a procurator to represent them, and cites legal
-authorities to show that the incompetency of the principal implies the
-incompetency of the proxy, in conformity with the maxim: _quod directe
-fieri prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet_. In like manner the
-invalidity of the summons bars any charge of contempt of court and
-condemnation for contumacy. Furthermore, the very nature of
-excommunication is such that it cannot be pronounced against them, since
-it is defined as _extra ecclesiam positio, vel e qualibet communione, vel
-quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. But these animals cannot be expelled
-from the Church, because they are not members of it and do not fall under
-its jurisdiction, as the apostle Paul says: "Ye judge them that are
-within and not them also that are without." _Excommunicatio afficit
-animam, non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cujus medicina est._
-The animal soul, not being immortal, cannot be affected by such sentence,
-which involves the loss of eternal salvation (_quae vergit in dispendium
-aeternae salutis_).
-
-A still more important consideration is that these insects are only
-exercising an innate right conferred upon them at their creation, when God
-expressly gave them "every green herb for meat," a right which cannot be
-curtailed or abrogated, simply because it may be offensive to man. In
-support of this view he quotes passages from Cicero's treatise _De
-Officiis_, the Epistle of Jude and the works of Thomas Aquinas. Finally,
-he maintains that his clients are agents of the Almighty sent to punish us
-for our sins, and to hurl anathemas against them would be to fight against
-God (_s'en prendre a Dieu_), who has said: "I will send wild beasts among
-you, which shall destroy you and your cattle and make you few in number."
-That all flesh has corrupted its way upon the earth, he thinks is as true
-now as before the deluge, and cites about a dozen lines from the
-_Metamorphoses_ of Ovid in confirmation of this fact. In conclusion he
-demands the acquittal of the defendants and their exemption from all
-further prosecution.
-
-The prosecuting attorney in his replication answers these objections in
-regular order, showing, in the first place, that, while the law may not
-punish an irrational creature for a crime already committed, it may
-intervene, as in the case of an insane person, to prevent the commission
-of a crime by putting the madman in a strait-jacket or throwing him into
-prison. He elucidates this principle by a rather far-fetched illustration
-from the legal enactments concerning betrothal and breach of promise of
-marriage. "It follows then inferentially that the aforesaid animals can be
-properly summoned to appear and that the summons is valid, inasmuch as
-this is done in order to prevent them from causing damage henceforth
-(_d'ores en avant_) and only incidentally to punish them for injuries
-already inflicted."
-
-"To affirm that such animals cannot be anathematized and excommunicated is
-to doubt the authority conferred by God upon his dear spouse, the Church,
-whom he has made the sovereign of the whole world, having, in the words of
-the Psalmist, put all things under her feet, all sheep and oxen, the
-beasts of the field, the fowl of the air, the fish of the sea and
-whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas. Guided by the Holy
-Spirit she does nothing unwisely; and if there is anything in which she
-should show forth her power it is in protecting and preserving the most
-perfect work of her heavenly husband, to wit, man, who was made in the
-divine image and likeness." The orator then dilates on the grandeur and
-glory of man and interlards his harangue with quotations from sacred and
-profane writers, Moses, Paul, Pliny, Ovid, Silius Italicus and Pico di
-Mirandola, and declares that nothing could be more absurd than to deprive
-such a being of the fruits of the earth for the sake of "vile and paltry
-vermin." In reply to the statement of Thomas Aquinas, quoted by the
-counsel for the defence, that it is futile to curse animals as such, the
-plaintiffs' advocate says that they are not viewed merely as animals, but
-as creatures doing harm to man by eating and wasting the products of the
-soil designed for human sustenance; in other words he ascribes to them a
-certain diabolical character. "But why dwell upon this point, since
-besides the instances recorded in Holy Writ, in which God curses inanimate
-things and irrational creatures, we have an infinite number of examples of
-holy men, who have excommunicated noxious animals. It will suffice to
-mention one familiar to us all and constantly before our eyes in the town
-of Aix, where St. Hugon, Bishop of Grenoble, excommunicated the serpents,
-which infested the warm baths and killed many of the inhabitants by biting
-them. Now it is well known, that if the serpents in that place or in the
-immediate vicinity bite any one, the bite is no longer fatal. The venom of
-the reptile was stayed and annulled by virtue of the excommunication, so
-that no hurt ensues from the bite, although the bite of the same kind of
-serpent outside of the region affected by the ban, is followed by death."
-
-That serpents and other poisonous reptiles could be deprived of their
-venom by enchantment and thus rendered harmless is in accord with the
-teachings of the Bible. Thus we read in Ecclesiastes (x. 11): "Surely the
-serpent will bite without enchantment," _i.e._ unless it be enchanted and
-its bite disenvenomed. A curious superstition concerning the adder is
-referred to in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5), where the wicked are said to be
-"like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear; which will not hearken to the
-voice of charmers, charming never so wisely." The Lord is also represented
-by Jeremiah (viii. 17) as threatening to "send serpents, cockatrices,
-among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you." It does
-not seem to have occurred to the prosecutor that the defendants might be
-locusts, which would not be excommunicated.
-
-The objection that God has sent these insects as a scourge, and that to
-anathematize them would be to fight against him, is met by saying that to
-have recourse to the offices of the Church is an act of religion, which
-does not resist, but humbly recognizes the divine will and makes use of
-the means appointed for averting the divine wrath and securing the divine
-favour.
-
-After the advocates had finished their pleadings, the case was summed up
-by the episcopal procurator substantially as follows:
-
-"The arguments offered by the counsel for the defence against the
-proceedings instituted by the inhabitants as complainants are worthy of
-careful consideration and deserve to be examined soberly and maturely,
-because the bolt of excommunication should not be hurled recklessly and at
-random (_a la volee_), being a weapon of such peculiar energy and activity
-that, if it fails to strike the object against which it is hurled, it
-returns to smite him, who hurled it." [This notion that an anathema is a
-dangerous missile to him who hurls it unlawfully or for an unjust purpose,
-retroacting like an Australian boomerang, survives in the homely proverb:
-"Curses, like chickens, come home to roost."] The bishop's proctor reviews
-the speeches of the lawyers, but seems to have his brains somewhat muddled
-by them. "It is truly a deep sea," he says, "in which it is impossible to
-touch bottom. We cannot tell why God has sent these animals to devour the
-fruits of the earth; this is for us a sealed book (_lettres closes_)." He
-suggests it may be "because the people turn a deaf ear to the poor begging
-at their doors," and goes off into a long eulogy on the beauty of charity,
-with an anthology of extracts from various writers in praise of
-alms-giving, among which is one from Eusebius descriptive of hell as a
-cold region, where the wailing and gnashing of teeth are attributed to
-the torments of eternal frost instead of everlasting fire (_liberaberis ab
-illo frigore, in quo erit fletus et stridor dentium_). Again, the plague
-of insects may be due to irreverence shown in the churches, which, he
-declares, have been changed from the house of God into houses of
-assignation. On this point he quotes from Tertullian, Augustine, and Numa
-Pompilius, and concludes by recommending that sentence of excommunication
-be pronounced upon the insects, and that the prayers and penances,
-customary in such cases, be imposed upon the inhabitants.
-
-After this discourse, which reads more like a homily from the pulpit than
-a plea at the bar and in the mouth of the bishop's proctor is simply an
-_oratio pro domo_, the official gave judgment in favour of the plaintiffs.
-The sentence, which was pronounced in Latin befitting the dignity and
-solemnity of the occasion, condemned the defendants to vacate the premises
-within six days on pain of anathema.
-
-The official begins by stating the case as that of "The People _versus_
-Locusts," declaring that the guilt of the accused has been clearly proved
-"by the testimony of worthy witnesses and, as it were, by public rumour,"
-and inasmuch as the people have humbled themselves before God and
-supplicated the Church to succour them in their distress, it is not
-fitting to refuse them help and solace. "Walking in the footsteps of the
-fathers, sitting on the judgment-seat, having the fear of God before our
-eyes and confiding in his mercy, relying on the counsel of experts, we
-pronounce and publish our sentence as follows:
-
-"In the name and by virtue of God, the omnipotent, Father, Son and Holy
-Spirit, and of Mary, the most blessed Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
-by the authority of the holy apostles Peter and Paul, as well as by that
-which has made us a functionary in this case, we admonish by these
-presents the aforesaid locusts and grasshoppers and other animals by
-whatsoever name they may be called, under pain of malediction and anathema
-to depart from the vineyards and fields of this district within six days
-from the publication of this sentence and to do no further damage there or
-elsewhere." If, on the expiration of this period, the animals have refused
-to obey this injunction, then they are to be anathematized and accursed,
-and the inhabitants of all classes are to beseech "Almighty God, the
-dispenser of all good gifts and the dispeller of all evils," to deliver
-them from so great a calamity, not forgetting to join with devout
-supplications the performance of all good works and especially "the
-payment of tithes without fraud according to the approved custom of the
-parish, and to abstain from blasphemies and such other sins as are of a
-public and particularly offensive character." (_Vide_ Appendix B.)
-
-It is doubtful whether one could find in the ponderous tomes of scholastic
-divinity anything surpassing in comical _non sequiturs_ and sheer nonsense
-the forensic eloquence of eminent lawyers as transmitted to us in the
-records of legal proceedings of this kind. Although the counsel for the
-defendants, as we have seen, ventured to question the propriety and
-validity of such prosecutions, his scepticism does not seem to have been
-taken seriously, but was evidently smiled at as the trick of a pettifogger
-bound to use every artifice to clear his clients. In the writings of
-mediaeval jurisprudents the right and fitness of inflicting judicial
-punishment upon animals appear to have been generally admitted. Thus Guy
-Pape, in his _Decisions of the Parliament of Grenoble_ (Qu. 238), raises
-the query, whether a brute beast, if it commit a crime, as pigs sometimes
-do in devouring children, ought to suffer death, and answers the question
-unhesitatingly in the affirmative: "_si animal brutum delinquat, sicut
-quandoque faciunt porci qui comedunt pueros, an debeat mori? Dico quod
-sic._" Jean Duret, in his elaborate Treatise on Pains and Penalties
-(_Traicte des Peines et des Amendes_, p. 250; cf. _Themis Jurisconsulte_,
-VIII. p. 57), takes the same view, declaring that "if beasts not only
-wound, but kill and eat any person, as experience has shown to happen
-frequently in cases of little children being eaten by pigs, they should
-pay the forfeit of their lives and be condemned to be hanged and
-strangled, in order to efface the memory of the enormity of the deed." The
-distinguished Belgian jurist, Jodocus Damhouder, discusses this question
-in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (cap. CXLII.), and holds that the beast
-is punishable, if it commits the crime through natural malice, and not
-through the instigation of others, but that the owner can redeem it by
-paying for the damage done; nevertheless he is not permitted to keep
-ferocious or malicious beasts and let them run at large, so as to be a
-constant peril to the community. Occasionally a more enlightened jurist
-had the common-sense and courage to protest against such perversions and
-travesties of justice. Thus Pierre Ayrault, _lieutenant-criminel au siege
-presidial d'Angers_, published at Angers, in 1591, a small quarto
-entitled: _Des Procez faicts au Cadaver, aux Cendres, a la Memoire, aux
-Bestes brutes, aux Choses inanimees et aux Contumax_, in which he argued
-that corpses, the ashes and the memory of the dead, brute beasts and
-inanimate things are not legal persons (_legales homines_) and therefore
-do not come within the jurisdiction of a court. Curiously enough a case
-somewhat analogous to those discussed by Pierre Ayrault was adjudicated
-upon only a few years ago. A Frenchman bequeathed his property to his own
-corpse, in behalf of which his entire estate was to be administered, the
-income to be expended for the preservation of his mortal remains and the
-adornment of the magnificent mausoleum in which they were sepulchred. His
-heirs-at-law contested the will, which was declared null and void by the
-court on the ground that "a subject deprived of individuality or of civil
-personality" could not inherit. The same principle would apply to the
-infliction of penalties upon such subjects. The only kind of legacy that
-will cause a man's memory to be cherished is the form of bequest which
-makes the public weal his legatee. The Chinese still hold to the barbarous
-custom of bringing corpses to trial and passing sentence upon them. On the
-6th of August, 1888, the cadaver of a salt-smuggler, who was wounded in
-the capture and died in prison, was brought before the criminal court in
-Shanghai and condemned to be beheaded. This sentence was carried out by
-the proper officers on the place of execution outside of the west gate of
-the city.
-
-Felix Hemmerlein, better known as Malleolus, a distinguished doctor of
-canon law and proto-martyr of religious reform in Switzerland, states in
-his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_, that in the fourteenth century the peasants
-of the Electorate of Mayence brought a complaint against some Spanish
-flies, which were accordingly cited to appear at a specified time and
-answer for their conduct; but "in consideration of their small size and
-the fact that they had not yet reached their majority," the judge
-appointed for them a curator, who "defended them with great dignity"; and,
-although he was unable to prevent the banishment of his wards, he obtained
-for them the use of a piece of land, to which they were permitted
-peaceably to retire. How they were induced to go into this insect
-reservation and to remain there we are not informed. The Church, as
-already stated, claimed to possess the power of effecting the desired
-migration by means of her ban. If the insects disappeared, she received
-full credit for accomplishing it; if not, the failure was due to the sins
-of the people; in either case the prestige of the Church was preserved and
-her authority left unimpaired.
-
-In 1519, the commune of Stelvio, in Western Tyrol, instituted criminal
-proceedings against the moles or field-mice,[3] which damaged the crops
-"by burrowing and throwing up the earth, so that neither grass nor green
-thing could grow." But "in order that the said mice may be able to show
-cause for their conduct by pleading their exigencies and distress," a
-procurator, Hans Grinebner by name, was charged with their defence, "to
-the end that they may have nothing to complain of in these proceedings."
-Schwarz Mining was the prosecuting attorney, and a long list of witnesses
-is given, who testified that the serious injury done by these creatures
-rendered it quite impossible for tenants to pay their rents. The counsel
-for the defendants urged in favour of his clients the many benefits which
-they conferred upon the community, and especially upon the agricultural
-class by destroying noxious insects and larvae and by stirring up and
-enriching the soil, and concluded by expressing the hope that, if they
-should be sentenced to depart, some other suitable place of abode might be
-assigned to them. He demanded, furthermore, that they should be provided
-with a safe conduct securing them against harm or annoyance from dog, cat
-or other foe. The judge recognized the reasonableness of the latter
-request, in its application to the weaker and more defenceless of the
-culprits, and mitigated the sentence of perpetual banishment by ordering
-that "a free safe-conduct and an additional respite of fourteen days be
-granted to all those which are with young and to such as are yet in their
-infancy; but on the expiration of this reprieve each and every must be
-gone, irrespective of age or previous condition of pregnancy." (_Vide_
-Appendix C.)
-
-An old Swiss chronicler named Schilling gives a full account of the
-prosecution and anathematization of a species of vermin called inger,
-which seems to have been a coleopterous insect of the genus Brychus and
-very destructive to the crops. The case occurred in 1478 and the trial was
-conducted before the Bishop of Lausanne by the authority and under the
-jurisdiction of Berne. The first document recorded is a long and earnest
-declaration and admonition delivered from the pulpit by a Bernese
-parish-priest, Bernhard Schmid, who begins by stating that his "dearly
-beloved" are doubtless aware of the serious injury done by the inger and
-of the suffering which they have caused. The Leutpriester, as he is
-termed, gives a brief history of the matter and of the measures taken to
-procure relief. The mayor and common council of Berne were besought in
-their wisdom to devise some means of staying the plague, and after much
-earnest deliberation they held counsel with the Bishop of Lausanne, who
-"with fatherly feeling took to heart so great affliction and harm" and by
-an episcopal mandate enjoined the inger from committing further
-depredations. After exhorting the people to entreat God by "a common
-prayer from house to house" to remove the scourge, he proceeds to warn and
-threaten the vermin in the following manner: "Thou irrational and
-imperfect creature, the inger, called imperfect because there was none of
-thy species in Noah's ark at the time of the great bane and ruin of the
-deluge, thou art now come in numerous bands and hast done immense damage
-in the ground and above the ground to the perceptible diminution of food
-for men and animals; and to the end that such things may cease, my
-gracious Lord and Bishop of Lausanne has commanded me in his name to
-admonish you to withdraw and to abstain; therefore by his command and in
-his name and also by virtue of the high and holy trinity and through the
-merits of the Redeemer of mankind, our Saviour Jesus Christ, and in virtue
-of and obedience to the Holy Church, I do command and admonish you, each
-and all, to depart within the next six days from all places where you have
-secretly or openly done or might still do damage, also to depart from all
-fields, meadows, gardens, pastures, trees, herbs, and spots, where things
-nutritious to men and to beasts spring up and grow, and to betake
-yourselves to the spots and places, where you and your bands shall not be
-able to do any harm secretly or openly to the fruits and aliments
-nourishing to men and beasts. In case, however, you do not heed this
-admonition or obey this command, and think you have some reason for not
-complying with them, I admonish, notify and summon you in virtue of and
-obedience to the Holy Church to appear on the sixth day after this
-execution at precisely one o'clock after midday at Wifflisburg, there to
-justify yourselves or to answer for your conduct through your advocate
-before His Grace the Bishop of Lausanne or his vicar and deputy. Thereupon
-my Lord of Lausanne or his deputy will proceed against you according to
-the rules of justice with curses and other exorcisms, as is proper in such
-cases in accordance with legal form and established practice." The priest
-then exhorts his "dear children" devoutly to beg and to pray on their
-knees with Paternosters and Ave Marias to the praise and honour of the
-high and holy trinity, and to invoke and crave the divine mercy and help
-in order that the inger may be driven away. (_Vide_ Appendix D.)
-
-There is no further record of proceedings at this time, and it is highly
-probable that the detection of some technical error rendered it necessary
-to postpone the case, since this pettifogger's trick was almost always
-resorted to and proved generally successful in procuring an adjournment.
-At any rate either this or a precisely similar trial occurred in the
-following year. Early in May 1479, the mayor and common council of Berne
-sent copies of the monitorium and citation issued by the Bishop of
-Lausanne to their representative for distribution among the priests of the
-afflicted parishes, in order that it might be promulgated from their
-respective pulpits and thus brought to the knowledge of the delinquents.
-About a week later, on May 15, the same authorities sent also a letter to
-the Bishop of Lausanne asking for new instructions in the matter, as they
-were not certain how they should proceed, urging that immediate steps
-should be taken, as the further delay would be "utterly intolerable." This
-impatience would seem to imply that the anathema had been hanging fire for
-some time and that the prosecution was identical with that of the
-preceding year.
-
-The appointed term having elapsed and the inger still persisting in their
-obduracy, the mayor and common council of Berne issued the following
-document conferring plenipotentiary power of attorney on Thuering Fricker
-to prosecute the case: "We, the mayor, council and commune of the city of
-Berne, to all those of the bishopric of Lausanne, who see, read, or hear
-this letter. We make known that after mature deliberation we have
-appointed, chosen and deputed and by virtue of the present letter do
-appoint, choose and depute the excellent Thuering Fricker, doctor of the
-liberal arts and of laws, our now chancellor, to be our legal delegate and
-agent and that of our commune, as well as of all the lands and places of
-the bishopric of Lausanne, which are directly or indirectly subject and
-appurtenant to us and of which a complete list is herein contained. And
-indeed he has assumed this general and special attorneyship, whereof the
-one shall not be prejudicial to the other, in the case which we have
-undertaken and prosecute and have determined to prosecute before the court
-of the right reverend in Christ Benedict de Montferrand, Bishop of
-Lausanne, Count and our most worthy Superior, against the noxious host of
-the inger (_brucorum_), which creeping secretly in the earth devastate the
-fields, meadows and all kinds of grain, whereby with grievous wrong they
-do detriment to the ever-living God, to whom the tithes belong, and to
-men, who are nourished therewith and owe obedience to him. In this cause
-he shall act in our stead, and in the name of all of us collectively and
-severally shall plead, demur, reply, prove by witnesses, hear judgment or
-judgments, appoint other defenders and in general and specially do each
-and every thing which the importance of the cause may demand and which we
-ourselves in case of our presence would be able to do. We solemnly promise
-in good faith that all and the whole of what may be transacted, performed,
-provided, pledged, and ordained in this cause by our aforesaid attorney or
-by the proxy appointed by him shall be firmly and gratefully observed by
-us, with the express renunciation of each and every thing that might
-either by right or actually, in any wise, either wholly or partially
-impair, weaken or assail our ordainment, conclusion and determination,
-also over against any reservation of right, which permits a general
-renunciation, even if no special reservation has preceded, with the
-exclusion of every fraud and every deceit. In corroboration and
-confirmation of the aforesaid we ratify this letter with the warranty of
-our seal. Given on the twenty-second of May 1479."
-
-The trial began a couple of days later and was conducted with less "of the
-law's delay" than usual, inasmuch as it ended on the twenty-ninth day of
-the same month. The defender of the insects was a certain Jean Perrodet of
-Freiburg, who according to all accounts was a very inefficient advocate
-and does not appear to have contested the case with the ability and energy
-which the interests of his clients required. The sentence of the court
-with the appended anathema of the bishop was as follows: "Ye accursed
-uncleanness of the inger, which shall not be called animals nor mentioned
-as such, ye have been heretofore by virtue of the appeal and admonition of
-our Lord of Lausanne enjoined to withdraw from all fields, grounds and
-estates of the bishopric of Lausanne, or within the next six days to
-appear at Lausanne, through your proctor, to set forth and to hear the
-cause of your procedure, and to act with just judgment either for or
-against you, pursuant to the said citation. Thereupon our gracious Lords
-of Berne solicited by their mandate such a day in court at Lausanne, and
-there before the tribunal renewed their plaint in their name and in that
-of all the provinces of the said bishopric, and your reply thereto through
-your proctor has been fully heard, and the legal terms have been justly
-observed by both parties, and a lawful decision pronounced word for word
-in this wise:
-
-"We, Benedict of Montferrand, Bishop of Lausanne, etc., having heard the
-entreaty of the high and mighty lords of Berne against the inger and the
-ineffectual and rejectable answer of the latter, and having thereupon
-fortified ourselves with the Holy Cross, and having before our eyes the
-fear of God, from whom alone all just judgments proceed, and being advised
-in this cause by a council of men learned in the law, do therefore
-acknowledge and avow in this our writing that the appeal against the
-detestable vermin and inger, which are harmful to herbs, vines, meadows,
-grain and other fruits, is valid, and that they be exorcised in the person
-of Jean Perrodet, their defender. In conformity therewith we charge and
-burden them with our curse, and command them to be obedient and
-anathematize them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
-that they turn away from all fields, grounds, enclosures, seeds, fruits
-and produce, and depart. By virtue of the same sentence I declare and
-affirm that you are banned and exorcised, and through the power of
-Almighty God shall be called accursed and shall daily decrease
-whithersoever you may go, to the end that of you nothing shall remain save
-for the use and profit of man. _Adiungendo aliquid in devotionem populi._"
-The phrase _das si beswaert werden in die person Johannis Perrodeti irs
-beschirmers_ does not imply that the vermin or the devils, of which they
-were supposed to be incarnations, were to be conjured into him, but refer
-to him merely as their proctor and legal representative. The results of
-the prosecution, which had been awaited with intense and anxious interest
-by the people, were received with great joy, and the Bernese government
-ordered a full report of the proceedings to be made. The ecclesiastical
-anathema, however, proved to be _brutum fulmen_; nothing more came of it,
-says Schilling, "owing to our sins." Another chronicler adds that God
-permitted the inger to remain as a plague and a punishment until the
-people repented of their wickedness and gave evidence of their love and
-gratitude to Him, namely, by giving to the Church tithes of what the
-insects had not destroyed.
-
-The Swiss priest in his malediction declares that the inger were not in
-Noah's ark and even denies that they are animals properly speaking,
-stigmatizing them as living corruption, products of spontaneous generation
-perhaps, or more probably creations of the devil. This position was
-assumed in order to escape the gross impropriety and glaring incongruity
-of having the Church of God curse the creatures which God had made and
-pronounced very good, and afterwards took pains to preserve from
-destruction by the deluge. This difficulty, always a serious one, was, as
-we have seen, one of the chief points urged by the counsel for the defence
-in favour of his clients.
-
-Malleolus gives the following formula for banning serpents and expelling
-them from human habitations, inculcating incidentally the iniquity of
-perjury and judicial injustice: "By virtue of this ban and conjuration I
-command you to depart from this house and cause it to be as hateful and
-intolerable to you, as the man, who knowingly bears false witness or
-pronounces an unjust sentence, is to God." Sometimes the exorcism was in
-the form of a prayer, as, for example, in that used for the purgation and
-disinfection of springs and water-courses: "O Lord Jesus, thou who didst
-bless the river Jordan and wast baptized in it and hast purified and
-cleansed it to the end that it might be a healing element for the
-redemption from sin, bless, sanctify and purify this water, so that there
-may be left in it nothing noxious, nothing pestiferous or contagious,
-nothing pernicious, but that everything in it may be pure and immaculate,
-in order that we may use whatever is created in it for our welfare and to
-thy glory, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."
-
-In a Latin protocol of legal proceedings in Crollolanza's _Storia del
-Contado di Chiavenna_ it is recorded that on June 26, 1659, Capt. J. B.
-Pestalozzi came, in behalf of the communes of Chiavenna, Mese, Gordona,
-Prada and Samolico, before the commissioner Hartmann Planta and brought
-complaint against certain caterpillars on account of the devastations
-committed by them, demanding that these hurtful creatures should be
-summoned by the proper sheriff to appear in court on June 28 at a
-specified hour in order to have a curator and defender appointed, who
-should answer for them to the plaintiffs. A second document, dated June
-28, 1659, and signed by the notary Battista Visconti, certifies that the
-said summons had been duly issued and five copies of the same been posted
-each on a tree in the five forests in the territory of the aforesaid five
-communes. A third document of the same date required the advocate of the
-accused, Cesare de Peverello, to appear before the court on the following
-Tuesday, July 1, in behalf of his recusant clients, who were charged with
-trespassing upon the fields, gardens and orchards and doing great damage
-therein, instead of remaining in their habitat, the forest. The
-prosecutors required that they should seek their food in wild and wooded
-places and cease from ravaging cultivated grounds. A fourth document
-contains an account of the trial; the pleadings of the respective parties,
-so far as they are preserved, do not differ essentially from those already
-quoted. In the fifth and final document the court recognizes the right of
-the caterpillars to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided
-the exercise of this right "does not destroy or impair the happiness of
-man, to whom all lower animals are subject." Accordingly a definite place
-of abode is to be assigned to them and various places are proposed. The
-protocol is incomplete, so that we are left in ignorance of the ultimate
-decision. The whole is written in execrable Latin quite worthy of the
-subject.
-
-More than half-a-century later the Franciscan friars of the cloister of
-St. Anthony in the province of Piedade no Maranhao, Brazil, were greatly
-annoyed by termites, which devoured their food, destroyed their furniture,
-and even threatened to undermine the walls of the monastery. Application
-was made to the bishop for an act of interdiction and excommunication, and
-the accused were summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical tribunal to
-give account of their conduct. The lawyer appointed to defend them urged
-the usual plea about their being God's creatures and therefore entitled to
-sustenance, and made a good point in the form of an _argumentum ad
-monachum_ by praising the industry of his clients, the white ants, and
-declaring them to be in this respect far superior to their prosecutors,
-the Gray Friars. He also maintained that the termites were not guilty of
-criminal aggression, but were justified in appropriating the fruits of the
-fields by the right derived from priority of possession, inasmuch as they
-had occupied the land long before the monks came and encroached upon their
-domain. The trial lasted for some time and called forth remarkable
-displays of legal learning and forensic eloquence, with numerous citations
-of sacred and profane authorities on both sides, and ended in a
-compromise, by the terms of which the plaintiffs were obliged to provide a
-suitable reservation for the defendants, who were commanded to go thither
-and to remain henceforth within the prescribed limits. In the chronicles
-of the cloister it is recorded, under date of Jan. 1713, that no sooner
-was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially
-before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in
-columns to the place assigned. The monkish annalist regards this prompt
-obedience as conclusive proof that the Almighty endorsed the decision of
-the court. [Cited by Emile Angel on the authority of Manoel Bernardes'
-_Nova Floresta, ou Sylva de varios apophthegmas e ditos sentencios
-espirituaes e moraes_, etc. Vol. V., Lisboa, 1747.]
-
-About the middle of the sixteenth century the inhabitants of several
-villages in Aargau were greatly annoyed by swarms of gadflies and
-petitioned the Bishop of Constance for relief. In the episcopal rescript,
-written and signed by the vidame Georg Winterstetter, the people are
-enjoined to abstain from dancing on Sundays and feast days, from all forms
-of libidinousness, gambling with cards or dice and other frivolities.
-These injunctions are followed by prayer and the usual formulas of
-conjuration and exorcism. The original document was written in Latin and
-preserved in the archives of Baden in Switzerland, but is now lost. In
-1566 the Landamman of Unterwalden, Johannes Wirz, took a German
-translation of it home with him to be used in case of need against the
-"vergifteten Wuermer," and deposited it in the archives of Obwalden, where
-it still remains. It was published in 1898 by Dr. Merz.
-
-In Protestant communities, the priest as exorcist has been superseded, to
-a considerable extent, by the professional conjurer, who in some portions
-of Europe is still employed to save crops from devouring insects and
-similar plagues. A curious instance of this kind is recorded in Goerres'
-_Historisch-Politische Blaetter_ for 1845 (Heft VII. p. 516). A Protestant
-gentleman in Westphalia, whose garden was devastated by worms, after
-having tried divers vermicidal remedies in vain, resolved to have recourse
-to a conjurer. The wizard came and walked about among the vegetables,
-touching them with a wand and muttering enchantments. Some workmen, who
-were repairing the roof of a stable near by, made fun of this hocus-pocus
-and began to throw bits of lime at the conjurer. He requested them to
-desist, and finally said: "If you don't leave me in peace, I shall send
-all the worms up on the roof." This threat only excited the hilarity of
-the scoffers, who continued to ridicule and disturb him in his
-incantations. Thereupon he went to the nearest hedge, cut a number of
-twigs, each about a finger in length, and placed them against the wall of
-the stable. Soon the vermin began to abandon the plants and, crawling in
-countless numbers over the twigs and up the wall, took complete possession
-of the roof. In less than an hour the men were obliged to stop working and
-stood in the court below covered with confusion and cabbage-worms.
-
-The writer, who relates this strange incident, fully believes that it
-actually occurred, and ascribes it to "the force of human faith and the
-magnetic power of a firm will over nature." This, too, is the theory held
-by Paracelsus, who maintained that the effectiveness of a curse lay in the
-energy of the will, by which the wish, so to speak, concretes into a deed,
-just as anger directs the arm and actualizes itself in a blow. By "fervent
-desire" merely, without any physical effort or aggressive act, he deemed
-it possible to wound a man's body or to pierce it through as with a sword.
-He also held that brutes are more easily exorcised or accursed than men,
-"for the spirit of man resists more than that of the brute." Similar
-notions were entertained nearly a century later by Jacob Boehme, who
-defines magic as "doing in the spirit of the will," an idea which finds
-more recent and more scientific expression in Schopenhauer's doctrine of
-"the objectivation of the will." Indeed, Schopenhauer's postulate of the
-will as the sole energy and actuality in the universe is only the
-philosophic statement of an assumption, upon which magicians and
-medicine-men, enchanters, exorcists and anathematizers have acted more or
-less in all ages. We have a striking illustration of the workings of some
-such mysterious, quasi-hyperphysical force in hypnotism, the reality of
-which it is no longer possible to deny, however wonderful and
-incomprehensible its manifestations may appear.
-
-It is natural that a religion of individual initiative and personal
-responsibility, like Protestantism, should put less confidence in theurgic
-machinery and formularies of ex-cathedral execration than a religion like
-Catholicism, in which man's spiritual concerns are entrusted to a
-hierarchical corporation to be managed according to traditional and
-infallible methods. This tendency crops out in a decree published at
-Dresden, in 1559, by "Augustus Duke and Elector," wherein he commends the
-"Christian zeal of the worthy and pious parson, Daniel Greysser," for
-having "put under ban the sparrows, on account of their unceasing and
-extremely vexatious chatterings and scandalous unchastity during the
-sermon, to the hindrance of God's word and of Christian devotion." But the
-Saxon parson, unlike the Bishop of Trier, did not expect that his ban
-would cause the offending birds to avoid the church or to fall dead on
-entering it. He relied less on the directly coercive or withering action
-of the curse than on the human agencies, which he might thereby set at
-work for the accomplishment of his purpose. By his proscription he put the
-culprits out of the pale of public sympathy and protection and gave them
-over as a prey to the spoiler, who was persuaded that he was doing a pious
-work by exterminating them. It was solemnly enjoined upon the hunter and
-the fowler to lie in wait for the anathematized sparrows with guns and
-with snares (_durch mancherlei visirliche und listige Wege_); and the
-Elector issued his decree in order to enforce this duty on all good
-Christians. (See Appendix E.)
-
-A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and
-exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some
-portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or
-simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to
-quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the
-rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with
-grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their
-holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on "Conjuring Rats," printed
-in _The Journal of American Folk-Lore_ (Jan.-March, 1892), gives a
-specimen of such a letter, dated, "Maine, Oct. 31, 1888," and addressed in
-business style to "Messrs. Rats and Co." The writer begins by expressing
-his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest
-they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street,
-uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a
-summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests
-that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they "can live snug
-and happy" in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds
-and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much
-grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed
-his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use "Rough on Rats." This
-threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his
-kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the
-Church.
-
-In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of
-the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of
-their houses:
-
- "Ratton and mouse,
- Lea' the puir woman's house,
- Gang awa' owre by to 'e mill,
- And there ane and a' ye'll get your fill."
-
-In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be
-assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to
-be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent
-across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their
-demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular
-superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:
-
- "A running stream they dare na cross."
-
-In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination,
-would find it impossible to return.
-
-It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that
-conjuring or "rhyming" rats seems to have been most common, if we may
-judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets.
-Thus in _As you Like It_ Rosalind says in reference to Orlando's verses:
-"I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat,
-which I can hardly remember." Randolph declares:
-
- "My poets
- Shall with a satire, steep'd in gall and vinegar,
- Rhime 'em to death, as they do rats in Ireland."
-
-Ben Jonson is still more specific:
-
- "Rhime 'em to death, as they do Irish rats,
- In drumming tunes."
-
-From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating
-of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the
-usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency
-has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which
-metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for
-the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of
-the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant
-mumbled as a charm.
-
-In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious
-stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches
-(_la Fete des Brandons ou des Bures_), the peasants wander in all
-directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted
-straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to
-burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing
-propensities of the curate:
-
- "Sortez, sortez d'ici, mulots!
- Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!
- Quittez, quittez ces bles!
- Allez, vous trouverez
- Dans la cave du cure
- Plus a boire qu'a manger."
-
-The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually
-includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the
-refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the
-following summons:
-
- "Taupes et mulots,
- Sors de mon clos,
- Ou je te casse les os;
- Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,
- Je te brule la barbe jusqu'aux os."
-
-The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises
-of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of "Callithumpian" music.
-
-Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century,
-states in his _History of the Franks_ (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans
-representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city
-against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was
-rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain
-round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against
-venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: _Hist, des Eveques du Mans_, 1648, p.
-441. Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc., p. 7.)
-
-The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of
-very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled [Greek: ta
-geoponika] and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by
-the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is
-given for getting rid of field-mice:
-
-"Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice,
-who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse
-to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I
-find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the
-mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces." The author quotes this
-recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but
-expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises
-the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the
-materials for his popular encyclopaedia chiefly from the "Geoponics"
-composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even
-most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same
-sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is
-evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of
-disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would
-have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered
-as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The
-resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the
-worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee's letter of advice is
-peculiarly interesting.
-
-In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were
-commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this
-injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the
-milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive
-and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode
-elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example,
-in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going
-into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: "In yonder
-village is church-ale (_Kirmes_)"; thus implying that they will find
-better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: _Sagen, Sitten und
-Gebraeuche aus Thueringen_. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant
-communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their
-neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only
-the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the
-same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called
-weather-crosses (_Wetterkreuze_) for the purpose of averting
-thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an
-adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that
-tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of
-demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ's death and the world's
-redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in
-the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to
-preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though
-the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some
-human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his
-hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox
-adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:
-
- "Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,
- Protect this house and burn the rest."
-
-Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice,
-legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties,
-including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds.
-In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by
-Berriat-Saint-Prix in the _Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of
-France_ (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the
-original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the
-kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of
-the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all
-ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D'Addosio so as to
-cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and
-forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of
-the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (_Vide_
-Appendix F for a still fuller list.)
-
-The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,
-flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,
-moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares
-and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found
-guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,
-two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the
-twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the
-fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,
-seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list
-might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of
-noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,
-at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyoe in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in
-Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was
-seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with
-anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts
-devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent
-by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to
-bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,
-in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the
-locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left
-for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the
-humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had
-been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other
-harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was
-recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as
-late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for
-having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.
-The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the
-dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom
-of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide
-a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not
-prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (_Amira_, p. 578.) It
-would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no
-judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the
-fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted
-to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest
-periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the
-courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have
-been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases
-of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been
-collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough
-their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small
-percentage of those which actually took place.
-
-Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it
-was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative
-enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently
-inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law
-and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly
-singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames.
-Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt
-of "Phelippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens," for the
-sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in
-"having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their
-teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed
-from life to death (_etoit alle de vie a trepas_)." In 1557, on the 6th of
-December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be
-"buried all alive" (_enfoui tout vif_), "for having devoured a little
-child in l'hostel de la Couronne." Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two
-pigs were subjected to this punishment, "on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,"
-at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three
-centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in
-the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Wuertemberg and carried
-off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who
-was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was
-buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons.
-We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently
-"powerful medicine" to stay the epizooetic plague; the noteworthy fact is
-that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian
-magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French
-republic.
-
-Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort
-confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had
-the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished
-merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion
-the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement
-of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (_L'Homme et la Bete._ Paris, 1872, p.
-344), that "the cries which they uttered under torture were received as
-confessions of guilt," is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by
-their tormentor. "The question," which under the circumstances would seem
-to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an
-important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of
-death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some
-milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his
-guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful
-means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher
-tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In
-one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal,
-and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the
-head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.
-
-In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having
-eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte
-Genevieve. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled
-and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having
-torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have
-a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive
-principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to
-make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man's
-clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense
-to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the
-hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he
-might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with
-clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred
-no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public
-functionary, a "master of high works" (_maitre des hautes oeuvres_), as he
-was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
-
-We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the
-Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinite_) at Falaise in Normandy was
-formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is
-mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully
-described by l'Abbe Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques
-sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work,
-published several years later, the Abbe states that, about the year 1820,
-the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the
-picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained,
-no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too,
-as the same writer informs us, _la chasse de la banniere_ (banner-holder)
-was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering
-and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
-
-In 1394, a pig was found guilty of "having killed and murdered a child in
-the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the
-said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant
-of the bailiff." The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_),
-Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of "fifty souls
-tournois." (_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of
-Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which
-contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration
-and execution of an infanticide sow:
-
- "Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to
- perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said
- bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four
- sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.
-
- "Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.
-
- "Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis."
-
-This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers
-parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De
-Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and
-"in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed
-with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in
-the year 1403." (See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed
-at Rouvres for the same offence.
-
-Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected
-to the same treatment. Thus "Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of
-our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche," acknowledges the
-receipt, "through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet,
-sheriff (_vicomte_) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers
-tournois for having found the king's bread for the prisoners detained, by
-reason of crime, in the said prison." The jailer gives the names of the
-persons in custody, and concludes the list with "Item, one pig, conducted
-into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408,
-inclusive, till the 17th of the following July," when it was hanged "for
-the crime of having murdered and killed a little child" (_pource que
-icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant_). For the pig's board
-the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a
-man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a
-footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into
-the account "ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the
-purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape." The correctness
-of the charges is certified to by "Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our
-lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche." (_Vide_ Appendix J.)
-Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to
-be hanged "until death ensueth," for having devoured an infant in its
-cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows
-for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also
-expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed
-for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d'Or,
-was left hanging "for a long space" on a gibbet in a field near the
-highway. (Derheims: _Histoire de Saint-Omer_, p. 327.) A little later a
-similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to
-Chalons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own
-words: _dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi
-existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur
-occidisse quemdam puerum_. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: _De poena bruti
-delinquentis_. Lugduni, MDCX.)
-
-On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the
-commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were
-feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited
-and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot
-Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his
-rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died
-soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned
-to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder
-and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the
-assault, and were ready and even eager to become _participes criminis_,
-they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the
-same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to
-endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold,
-then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of
-the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and
-free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered
-that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (_Vide_
-Appendix K.)
-
-A peculiar custom is referred to in the _proces verbal_ of the prosecution
-of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed
-within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case
-was tried and the accused sentenced to be "hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet." The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross
-near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from
-Nancy. "From time immemorial," we are told, "the justiciary of the Lord
-Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of
-Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they
-may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has
-delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise
-impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals
-wholly naked." The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without
-it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar
-circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.
-
- "'Twill be recorded for a precedent;
- And many an error, by the same example
- Will rush into the state: it cannot be."
-
-In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man
-guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious
-and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off
-its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an
-arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of
-personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and
-supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and
-mediaeval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly
-complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum
-Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be
-more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to
-choose evil-doers, "assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious
-back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers,
-and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice." Indeed, these
-hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For
-example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow,
-which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter's child,
-was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority,
-took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there "hanged it publicly
-to the disgrace and detriment of the city." For this impudent usurpation
-of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return.
-Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt
-sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile
-fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the
-execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the
-magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited
-the public wrath and official indignation.
-
-Buggery (_offensa cujus nominatio crimen est_, as it is euphemistically
-designated in legal documents) was uniformly punished by putting to death
-both parties implicated, and usually by burning them alive. The beast,
-too, is punished and both are burned (_punitur etiam pecus et ambo
-comburuntur_), says Guillielmus Benedictinus, a writer on law, who lived
-about the end of the fourteenth century. Thus, in 1546, a man and a cow
-were hanged and then burned by order of the parliament of Paris, the
-supreme court of France. In 1466, the same tribunal condemned a man and a
-sow to be burned at Corbeil. Occasionally interment was substituted for
-incremation. Thus in 1609, at Niederrad, a man and a mare were executed
-and their bodies buried in the same carrion-pit. On the 12th of September,
-1606, the mayor of Loens de Chartres, on complaint of the dean, canons,
-and chapter of the cathedral of Chartres, condemned a man named Guillaume
-Guyart to be "hanged and strangled on a gibbet in reparation and
-punishment of sodomy, whereof the said Guyart is declared accused,
-attainted and convicted." A bitch, his accomplice, was sentenced to be
-knocked on the head (_assommee_) by the executioner of high justice and
-"the dead bodies of both to be burned and reduced to ashes." It is
-furthermore added that if the said Guyart, who seems to have
-contumaciously given leg-bail, cannot be seized and apprehended in person,
-the sentence shall, in his case, be executed in effigy by attaching his
-likeness in painting to the gibbet. It was also decreed that all the
-property of the absconder should be confiscated and the sum of one hundred
-and fifty livres be adjudged to the plaintiffs, out of which the costs of
-the trial were to be defrayed. (_Vide_ Appendix L.) This disgusting crime
-appears to have been very common; at least Ayrault in his _Ordre
-Judiciaire_, published in 1606, states that he has many times
-(_multoties_) seen brute beasts put to death for this cause. In his
-_Magnalia Christi Americana_ (Book VI, (III), London, 1702) Cotton Mather
-records that "on June 6, 1662, at New Haven, there was a most
-unparalleled wretch, one Potter by name, about sixty years of age,
-executed for damnable Bestialities." He had been a member of the Church
-for twenty years and was noted for his piety, "devout in worship, gifted
-in prayer, forward in edifying discourse among the religious, and zealous
-in reforming the sins of other people." Yet this monster, who is described
-as possessed by an unclean devil, "lived in most infandous Buggeries for
-no less than fifty years together, and now at the gallows there were
-killed before his eyes a cow, two heifers, three sheep and two sows, with
-all of which he had committed his brutalities. His wife had seen him
-confounding himself with a bitch ten years before; and he then excused
-himself as well as he could, but conjured her to keep it secret." He
-afterwards hanged the bitch, probably as a sort of vicarious atonement.
-According to this account he must have begun to practice sodomy when he
-was ten years of age, a vicious precocity which the author would doubtless
-explain on the theory of diabolical possession. In 1681, a habitual
-sodomite, who had been wont to defile himself with greyhounds, cows,
-swine, sheep and all manner of beasts, was brought to trial together with
-a mare, at Wuenschelburg in Silesia, where both were burned alive. In 1684,
-on the 3rd of May, a bugger was beheaded at Ottendorf, and the mare, his
-partner in crime, knocked on the head; it was expressly enjoined that in
-burning the bodies the man's should lie underneath that of the beast. In
-the following year, fourteen days before Christmas, a journeyman tailor,
-"who had committed the unnatural deed of carnal lewdness with a mare," was
-burned at Striga together with the mare.
-
-For the same offence Benjamin Deschauffour was condemned, May 25, 1726, to
-be tied to a stake and there burned alive "together with the minutes of
-the trial;" his ashes were strewed to the wind and his estates seized and,
-after the deduction of a fine of three thousand livres, confiscated to the
-benefit of his Majesty. In the case of Jacques Ferron, who was taken in
-the act of coition with a she-ass at Vanvres in 1750, and after due
-process of law, sentenced to death, the animal was acquitted on the ground
-that she was the victim of violence and had not participated in her
-master's crime of her own free-will. The prior of the convent, who also
-performed the duties of parish priest, and the principal inhabitants of
-the commune of Vanvres signed a certificate stating that they had known
-the said she-ass for four years, and that she had always shown herself to
-be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad and had never given
-occasion of scandal to any one, and that therefore "they were willing to
-bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a
-most honest creature." This document, given at Vanvres on Sept. 19, 1750,
-and signed by "Pintuel Prieur Cure" and the other attestors, was produced
-during the trial and exerted a decisive influence upon the judgment of the
-court. As a piece of exculpatory evidence it may be regarded as unique in
-the annals of criminal prosecutions.
-
-The Carolina or criminal code of the emperor Charles V., promulgated at
-the diet of Ratisbon in 1532, ordained that sodomy in all its forms and
-degrees should be punished with death by fire "according to common custom"
-("_so ein_ Mensch mit einem Viehe, Mann mit Mann, Weib mit Weib,
-Unkeuschheit treibet, die haben auch das Leben verwircket, und man soll
-sie der gemeinen Gewohnheit nach mit dem Feuer vom Leben zum Tode
-richten." Art. 116.), but stipulated that, if for any reason the
-punishment of the sodomite should be mitigated, the same measure of mercy
-should be shown to the beast. This principle is reaffirmed by Benedict
-Carpzov in his _Pratica Nova Rerum Criminalium_ (Wittenberg, 1635), in
-which he states that "if for any cause the sodomite shall be punished only
-with the sword, then the beast participant of his crime shall not be
-burned, but shall be struck dead and buried by the knacker or field-master
-(_Caviller oder Feldmeister_)." The bugger was also bound to compensate
-the owner for the loss of the animal, or, if he left no property, the
-value must be paid out of the public treasury. "If the criminal act was
-not fully consummated, then the human offender was publicly scourged and
-banished, and the animal, instead of being killed, was put away out of
-sight in order that no one might be scandalized thereby" [Jacobi Doepleri,
-_Theatrum Poenarum Suppliciorum et Executionum Criminalium, oder
-Schau-Platz derer Leibes- und Lebens-Straffen_, etc. Sondershausen, 1693,
-II. p. 151.]
-
-All Christian legislation on this subject is simply an application and
-amplification of the Mosaic law as recorded in Exodus xxii. 19 and
-Leviticus xx. 13-16, just as the cruel persecutions and prosecutions for
-witchcraft in mediaeval and modern times derive their authority and
-justification from the succinct and peremptory command: "Thou shalt not
-suffer a witch to live." In the older criminal codes two kinds or degrees
-of sodomy are mentioned, _gravius_ and _gravissimum_; the former being
-condemned in the thirteenth verse and the latter in the fifteenth and
-sixteenth verses of Leviticus. Doepler tells some strange stories of the
-results of the _peccatum gravissimum_; and the fact that a sober writer on
-jurisprudence could believe and seriously narrate such absurdities,
-furnishes a curious contribution to the history of human credulity.
-
-It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
-code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
-include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
-jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
-constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
-opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boer (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
-of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
-house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
-on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, "since
-coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
-with a dog" (Doepl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
-cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, "inasmuch as such
-persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
-beasts."
-
-But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
-animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of "murder
-flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
-son of Jehan Martin of Savigny," and sentenced to be "hanged by the hind
-feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esprone_)." Her six sucklings, being
-found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
-but "in lack of any positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the
-deceased, they were restored to their owner, on condition that he should
-give bail for their appearance, should further evidence be forthcoming to
-prove their complicity in their mother's crime." Above three weeks later,
-on the 2nd of February, to wit "on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
-the Virgin," the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
-their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
-answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
-as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
-Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
-completeness with which the _proces verbal_ has been preserved. (See
-Appendix M.)
-
-Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending animal, as
-was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, who were condemned, on the
-18th of April, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat near
-Chartres, to pay a fine of eighteen francs and to be confined in prison
-until this sum should be paid, "on account of the murder of a child named
-Gilon, aged five and a half years or thereabouts, perpetrated by a porker,
-aged three months or thereabouts." The pig was condemned to be "hanged and
-executed by justice." The owners were punished because they were supposed
-to have been culpably negligent of the child, who had been confided to
-their care and keeping, and not because they had, in the eye of the law,
-any proprietary responsibility for the infanticidal animal. The mulct
-implied remissness on their part as guardians or foster-parents of the
-infant. In general, as we have seen, the owner of the blood-guilty beast
-was considered wholly blameless and sometimes even remunerated for his
-loss. (_Vide_ Appendix N.)
-
-According to the laws of the Bogos, a pastoral and nominally Christian
-tribe of Northern Abyssinia, a bull, cow or any other animal which kills a
-man is put to death; the owner of the homicidal beast is not held in any
-wise responsible for its crime, nevertheless he practically incurs a
-somewhat heavy penalty by not receiving any compensation for the loss of
-his property. This exercise of justice is quite common among the tribes of
-Central Africa. In Montenegro, horses, oxen and pigs have been recently
-tried for homicide and put to death, unless the owner redeemed them by
-paying a ransom.
-
-On the 14th of June, 1494, a young pig was arrested for having "strangled
-and defaced a young child in its cradle, the son of Jehan Lenfant, a
-cowherd on the fee-farm of Clermont, and of Gillon his wife," and
-proceeded against "as justice and reason would desire and require."
-Several witnesses were examined, who testified "on their oath and
-conscience" that "on the morning of Easter Day, as the father was guarding
-cattle and his wife Gillon was absent in the village of Dizy, the infant
-being left alone in its cradle, the said pig entered during the said time
-the said house and disfigured and ate the face and neck of the said
-child, which, in consequence of the bites and defacements inflicted by the
-said pig, departed this life (_de ce siecle trepassa_)." The sentence
-pronounced by the judge was as follows, "We, in detestation and horror of
-the said crime, and to the end that an example may be made and justice
-maintained, have said, judged, sentenced, pronounced and appointed, that
-the said porker, now detained as a prisoner and confined in the said
-abbey, shall be by the master of high works hanged and strangled on a
-gibbet of wood near and adjoinant to the gallows and high place of
-execution belonging to the said monks, being contiguous to their fee-farm
-of Avin." The crime was committed "on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet, appertaining in all matters of high, mean and
-base justice to the monks of the order of Premonstrants," and the
-prosecution was conducted by "Jehan Levoisier, licenciate in law, the
-grand mayor of the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon of the order
-of Premonstrants and the aldermen of the same place." The plaintiffs were
-the friars, who preferred charges against the pig and procured the
-evidence necessary to its conviction. (_Vide_ Appendix O.)
-
-In 1394, a pig was hanged at Mortaign for having sacrilegiously eaten a
-consecrated wafer; and in a case of infanticide, it is expressly stated in
-the plaintiff's declaration that the pig killed the child and ate of its
-flesh, "although it was Friday," and this violation of the _jejunium
-sextae_, prescribed by the Church, was urged by the prosecuting attorney
-and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker's
-offence.
-
-Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind.
-Infanticidal swine were hanged in 1419 at Labergement-le-Duc, in 1420 at
-Brochon, in 1435 at Trocheres, and in 1490 at Abbeville; the
-last-mentioned execution took place "under the auspices of the aldermanity
-and with the tolling of the bells." It was evidently regarded as a very
-solemn affair. The records of mediaeval courts, the chronicles of mediaeval
-cloisters, and the archives of mediaeval cities, especially such as were
-under episcopal sovereignty and governed by ecclesiastical law, are full
-of such cases. The capital punishment of a dumb animal for its crimes
-seems to us so irrational and absurd, that we can hardly believe that sane
-and sober men were ever guilty of such folly; yet the idea was quite
-familiar to our ancestors even in Shakespeare's day, in the brilliant
-Elizabethan age of English literature, as is evident from a passage in
-Gratiano's invective against Shylock:
-
- "thy currish spirit
- Govern'd a wolf, who, hang'd for human slaughter,
- Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
- And, whilst thou lay'st in thy unhallow'd dam,
- Infus'd itself in thee; for thy desires
- Are wolfish, bloody, starv'd, and ravenous."
-
-That such cases usually came under the jurisdiction of monasteries and
-so-called spiritualities and were tried by their peculiarly organized
-tribunals, will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious
-establishments were great landed proprietors and at one time owned nearly
-one-third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were
-brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to
-the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to
-their immense number. The fact that they were under the special protection
-of St. Anthony of Padua conferred upon them a certain immunity, so that
-they became a serious nuisance, not only endangering the lives of
-children, but also generating and disseminating diseases. It is recorded
-that in 1131, as the Crown Prince Philippe, son of Louis the Gross, was
-riding through one of the principal streets of Paris, a boar, belonging to
-an abbot, ran violently between the legs of his horse, so that the prince
-fell to the ground and was killed. In some cities, like Grenoble in the
-sixteenth century, the authorities treated them very much as we do mad
-dogs, empowering the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at
-large. On Nov. 20, 1664, the municipality of Naples passed an ordinance
-that the pigs, which frequented the streets and piazzas to the detriment
-and danger of the inhabitants, should be removed from the city to a wood
-or other uninhabited place or be slaughtered within twelve days on pain
-of the penalties already prescribed and threatened, probably in the order
-issued on Nov. 3, of the same year. It would seem, however, that these
-ordinances did not produce the desired effect, or soon fell into abeyance,
-since another was promulgated four years later, on Nov. 29, 1668,
-expelling the pigs from the city and calling attention to the fact that
-they corrupted the atmosphere and thus imperiled the public health.
-Sanitary considerations and salutary measures of this kind were by no
-means common in the Middle Ages, but were a gradual outgrowth of the
-spirit of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men
-began to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value as well as
-its aesthetic beauty. Little heed was paid to such things in the "good old
-times" of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years
-a person went unwashed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was
-estimated by the thickness of the layers of filth on the body, as the age
-of the earth is determined by the strata which compose its crust.
-
-The freedom of the city almost universally enjoyed by mediaeval swine is
-still maintained by their descendants in many towns of Southern Italy and
-Sicily, where they ramble at will through the streets or assemble in
-council before the palace of the prefect (cf. D'Addosio, _Bestie
-Delinquenti_, pp. 23-5).
-
-In the latter half of the sixteenth century the tribunals began to take
-preventive measures against the public nuisance by holding the inhabitants
-responsible for the injuries done to individuals by swine running at large
-and by threatening with corporal as well as pecuniary punishment all
-persons who left "such beasts without a good and sure guard." Thus it is
-recorded that on the 27th of March, 1567, "a sow with a black snout," "for
-the cruelty and ferocity" shown in murdering a little child four months
-old, having "eaten and devoured the head, the left hand and the part above
-the right breast of the said infant," was condemned to be "exterminated to
-death, and to this end to be hanged by the executioner of high justice on
-a tree within the metes and bounds of the said judicature on the highway
-from Saint-Firmin to Senlis." The court of the judicatory of Senlis, which
-pronounced this sentence on complaint of the procurator of the seigniory
-of Saint-Nicolas, also forbade all the inhabitants and subjects of the
-said seignioralty to permit the like beasts to go unguarded on pain of an
-arbitrary fine and of corporal chastisement in default of payment. (_Vide_
-Appendix P.)
-
-But although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, especially
-as regard infanticide, other quadrupeds were frequently called to answer
-for similar crimes. Thus, in 1314, a bull belonging to a farmer in the
-village of Moisy, escaped into the highway, where it attacked a man and
-injured him so severely that he died a few hours afterwards. The ferocious
-animal was seized and imprisoned by the officers of Charles, Count of
-Valois, and after being tried and convicted was sentenced to be hanged.
-This judgment of the court was confirmed by the Parliament of Paris and
-the execution took place at Moisy-le-Temple on the common gallows. An
-appeal based upon the incompetency of the court was then made by the
-Procurator of the Order of the Hospital of the Ville de Moisy to the
-Parliament of La Chandeleur, which decided that the bull had met with its
-deserts and been justly put to death, but that the Count of Valois had no
-jurisdiction on the territory of Moisy, and his officials no power to
-institute proceedings in this case. The sentence was right in equity, but
-judicially and technically wrong, and could not therefore serve as a
-precedent.
-
-There is also extant an order issued by the magistracy of Gisors in 1405,
-commanding payment to be made to the carpenter who had erected the
-scaffold on which an ox had been executed "for its demerits." Again on the
-16th of May, 1499, the judicial authorities of the Cistercian Abbey of
-Beaupre near Beauvais condemned a red bull to be "executed until death
-inclusively," for having "killed with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age, named Lucas Dupont," who was employed in tending the
-horned cattle of the farmer Jean Boullet. (_Vide_ Appendix Q.) In 1389,
-the Carthusians of Dijon caused a horse to be condemned to death for
-homicide; and as late as 1697 a mare was burned by the decision and decree
-of the Parliament of Aix, which, it must be remembered, was not a
-legislative body, but a supreme court of judicature, thus differing in its
-functions from the States General, the only law-making and representative
-assembly in France, that may be said to have corresponded in the slightest
-degree to the modern conception of a parliament.
-
-In 1474, the magistrates of Bale sentenced a cock to be burned at the
-stake "for the heinous and unnatural crime of laying an egg." The _auto da
-fe_ was held on a height near the city called the Kohlenberg, with as
-great solemnity as would have been observed in consigning a heretic to the
-flames, and was witnessed by an immense crowd of townsmen and peasants.
-The statement made by Gross in his _Kurze Basler Chronik_, that the
-executioner on cutting open the cock found three more eggs in him, is of
-course absurd; we have to do in this case not with a freak of nature, but
-with the freak of an excited imagination tainted with superstition. Other
-instances of this kind have been recorded, one in the Swiss Praettigau as
-late as 1730, although in many cases the execution of the gallinaceous
-malefactor was more summary and less ceremonious than at Bale.
-
-The _oeuf coquatri_ was supposed to be the product of a very old cock and
-to furnish the most active ingredient of witch ointment. When hatched by a
-serpent or a toad, or by the heat of the sun it brought forth a cockatrice
-or basilisk, which would hide in the roof of the house and with its
-baneful breath and "death-darting eye" destroy all the inmates. Many
-naturalists believed this fable as late as the eighteenth century, and in
-1710 the French savant Lapeyronie deemed this absurd notion worthy of
-serious refutation, and read a paper, entitled "Observation sur les petits
-oeufs de poule sans jaune, que l'on appelle vulgairement oeufs de Coq,"
-before the Academy of Sciences in order to prove that cocks never lay and
-that the small and yolkless eggs attributed to them owe their peculiar
-shape and condition to a disease of the hen resulting in a hydropic
-malformation of the oviduct. A farmer brought him several specimens of
-this sort, somewhat larger than a pigeon's egg, and assured him that they
-had been laid by a cock in his own barnyard. On opening one of them, M.
-Lapeyronie was surprised to find only a very slight trace of the yolk
-resembling "a small serpent coiled." He now began to suspect that the cock
-might be an hermaphrodite, but on killing and dissecting it discovered
-nothing in support of this theory, the internal organs being all perfectly
-healthy and normal. But although the unfortunate chanticleer had fallen a
-victim to the scientific investigation of a popular delusion, the eggs in
-question continued to be produced, until the farmer by carefully watching
-the fowls detected the hen that laid them. The dissection showed that the
-pressure of a bladder of serous fluid against the oviduct had so
-contracted it, that the egg in passing had the yolk squeezed out of it,
-leaving merely a yellowish discoloration that looked like a worm. Another
-peculiarity of this hen was that she crowed like "a hoarse cock" (_un coq
-enroue_), only more violently; a phenomenon also a source of terror to the
-superstitious, but ascribed by M. Lapeyronie to the same morbid state of
-the oviduct and the consequent pain caused by the passage of the egg
-(_Memoires de l'Academie de Sciences._ Paris, 1710, pp. 553-60.)
-
-A Greek physiologus of the twelfth century, written in verse, calls the
-animal hatched from the egg of an old cock [Greek: epteinaria], a name
-which would imply some sort of winged creature. It was "sighted like the
-basilisk," and endowed also in other respects with the same fatal
-qualities.
-
-In the case of a valuable animal, such as an ox or a horse, the severity
-of retaliatory justice was often tempered by economical considerations and
-the culprit confiscated, but not capitally punished. Thus as early as the
-twelfth century it is expressly stated that "it is the law and custom in
-Burgundy that if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it
-shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior
-within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated or by his servitors and
-be confiscated to him and shall be sold and appropriated to the profit of
-the said Seignior; but if other beasts or Jews do it, they shall be hanged
-by the hind feet" (Coustumes et Stilles de Bourgoigne, Sec. 197 in Giraud:
-_Essai sur l'Histoire du Droit Francais_, II. p. 302; quoted by Amira). It
-was a cruel irony of the law that conferred upon pigs and Jews a perfect
-equality of rights by sending them both to the scaffold.
-
-Animals were put on a par with old crones in bearing their full share of
-persecution during the witchcraft delusion. Pigs suffered most in this
-respect, since they were assumed to be peculiarly attractive to devils,
-and therefore particularly liable to diabolical possession, as is evident
-from the legion that went out of the lunatic and were permitted, at their
-own request, to enter into the Gadarene herd of swine. But Beelzebub did
-not disdain to become incarnate in all sorts of creatures, such as cats,
-dogs of high and low degree, wolves, night-birds and indeed in any beast,
-especially if it chanced to be black. Goats, it is well known, were not a
-too stinking habitation for him, and even to dwell in skunks he did not
-despise. The perpetual smell of burning sulphur in his subterranean abode
-may render him proof against any less suffocating form of stench. The
-Bible represents Satan as going about as a roaring lion; and according to
-the highest ecclesiastical authorities he has appeared visibly as a raven,
-a porcupine, a toad and a gnat. Indeed, there is hardly a living creature
-in which he has not deigned to disport himself from a blue-bottle to a
-bishop, to say nothing of his "appearing invisibly at times" (_aliquando
-invisibiliter apparens_), if we may believe what the learned polyhistor
-Tritheim tells of his apparitions. As all animals were considered
-embodiments of devils, it was perfectly logical and consistent that the
-Prince of Darkness should reveal himself to mortal ken as a mongrel
-epitome of many beasts--snake, cat, dog, pig, ape, buck and horse each
-contributing some characteristic part to his incarnation.
-
-It was during the latter half of the seventeenth century, when, as we have
-seen, criminal prosecutions of animals were still quite frequent and the
-penalties inflicted extremely cruel, that Racine caricatured them in Les
-Plaideurs, where a dog is tried for stealing and eating a capon. Dandin
-solemnly takes his seat as judge, and declares his determination to "close
-his eyes to bribes and his ears to brigue." Petit Jean prosecutes and
-L'Intime appears for the defence. Both address the court in florid and
-high-flown rhetoric and display rare erudition in quoting Aristotle,
-Pausanias and other ancient as well as modern authorities. The accused is
-condemned to the galleys. Thereupon the counsel for the defendant brings
-in a litter of puppies, _pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins_, and
-appeals to the compassion and implores the clemency of the judge. Dandin's
-feelings are touched, for he, too, is a father; as a public officer, also,
-he is moved by the economical consideration of the expense to the state of
-keeping the offspring of the culprit in a foundling hospital, in case they
-should be deprived of paternal support. To the contemporaries of Racine
-the representation of a scene like this had a significance, which we fail
-to appreciate. It strikes us as simply farcical and not very funny; to
-them it was a mirror reflecting a characteristic feature of the time and
-ridiculing a grave judicial abuse, as Cervantes, a century earlier,
-burlesqued the institution of chivalry in the adventures of Don Quixote.
-(See Appendix R.)
-
-_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in
-human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an
-ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not
-to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more
-universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man's dealings
-with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which
-others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded "life for life, eye
-for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for
-burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." An old Anglo-Saxon law made
-this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all
-crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to
-be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that "whosoever looketh on
-a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his
-heart." ["Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat,
-propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos,
-qui calorem stupri induxerunt." Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This
-was believed to be God's method of punishment, smiting with disease or
-miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of
-sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a
-thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate
-a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The
-same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu,
-which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.
-
-In the covenant with Noah it was declared that human blood should be
-required not only "at the hand of man," but also "at the hand of every
-beast;" and it was subsequently enacted, in accordance with this
-fundamental principle, that "if an ox gore a man or a woman that they die,
-then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten." To
-eat a creature which had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in
-judicial punishment, would savour of anthropophagy. This decision of
-Jewish law-givers as to the use of the flesh of otherwise edible animals
-condemned to death for crime has nearly always been followed. Thus when,
-in 1553, several swine were executed for child-murder at Frankfort on the
-Main, their carcasses, although doubtless as good pork as could be found
-in the shambles, were thrown into the river. Usually, however, they were
-buried under the gallows or in whatever spot was set apart for interring
-the dead bodies of human criminals. At Ghent, however, in 1578, after
-judicial sentence of death had been pronounced on a cow, she was
-slaughtered and her flesh sold as butcher's meat, half of the proceeds of
-the sale being given as compensation to the injured party and the other
-half to the city treasury for distribution among the poor; but her head
-was struck off and stuck on a stake near the gallows, to indicate that she
-had been capitally punished. The thrifty Flemings did not permit the moral
-depravity to taint the material substance of the bovine culprit and impair
-the excellence of the beef.
-
-On the other hand, the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic decided
-that a cow, which had pushed a woman and thereby caused her death at
-Machern in Saxony, July 20, 1621, should be taken to a secluded and
-barren place and there killed and buried "unflayed." In this case the
-flesh of the homicidal animal was not to be eaten nor the hide converted
-into leather. (_Vide_ Appendix S.)
-
-In this connection it may be interesting to mention a decision of the
-Ecclesiastical Court (_geistlicher Convent_) of Berne, given in 1666 and
-recorded in Tuerler's _Strafrechtliche Gutachten des geistlichen Konvents
-der Stadt Bern_ (_Zeitschrift fuer schweiz._ _Strafrecht_, Bd. III., Heft
-5. Quoted by Tobler). An insane man was tried for murder and the
-prosecutor seems to have urged that the lack of moral responsibility did
-not suffice to relieve the accused of legal responsibility and to free him
-from punishment, citing as pertinent to the case the Mosaic law, which
-inflicted the death penalty on an ox for the like offence. On this point
-the court replied: "In the first place, that specifically Jewish law is
-not binding upon other governments, and is not observed by them either as
-regards oxen or horses. Again, even if the Jewish law should be really
-applicable to all men, it could not be appealed to in the present case,
-since it is not permissible to draw an inference _a bove ad hominem_.
-Inasmuch as no law is given to the ox, it cannot violate any, in other
-words, cannot sin and therefore cannot be punished. On the other hand,
-death is a severe penalty for man. Nevertheless if God commanded that the
-'goring ox' should be killed, this was done in order to excite aversion to
-the deed, to prevent the animal from injuring others, and in this manner
-to punish the owner of the beast. This fact, however, proves nothing
-touching the case now before us; for, although God enacted a law for the
-ox, he did not enact any for the insane man, and the distinction between
-the goring ox and the maniac must be observed. An ox is created for man's
-sake, and can therefore be killed for his sake; and in doing this there is
-no question of right or wrong as regards the ox; on the other hand, it is
-not permissible to kill a man, unless he has deserved death as a
-punishment." The remarkable points in this decision are, first, the
-abrogation of a biblical enactment by an ecclesiastical court of the
-seventeenth century, and, secondly, the discussion of a criminal act from
-a psychiatrical point of view and the admission of extenuating and
-exculpating circumstances derived from this source.
-
-The Koran holds every beast and fowl accountable for injuries done to each
-other, but reserves their punishment for the life to come. Among the
-Kukis, if a man falls from a tree and is killed, it is the sacred duty of
-the next of kin to fell the tree, and cut it up and scatter the chips
-abroad. The spirit of the tree was supposed to have caused the mishap, and
-the blood of the slain was not thought to be thoroughly avenged until the
-offending object had been effaced from the earth. A survival of this
-notion was the custom of burning heretics and flinging their ashes to the
-four winds or casting them upon rivers running into the sea. The laws of
-Drakon and Erechtheus required weapons and all other objects, by which a
-person had lost his life, to be publicly condemned and thrown beyond the
-Athenian boundaries. This sentence of banishment, then regarded as one of
-the severest that could be inflicted, was pronounced upon a sword, which
-had killed a priest, the wielder of the same being unknown; and also upon
-a bust of the elegiac poet Theognis, which had fallen on a man and caused
-his death. Even in cases which, one would think, might be regarded as
-justifiable homicide in self-defence, no such ground of exculpation seems
-to have been admitted. Thus the statue erected by the Athenians in honour
-of the famous athlete, Nikon of Thasos, was assailed by his envious foes
-and pushed from its pedestal. In falling it crushed one of its assailants,
-and was therefore brought before the proper tribunal and sentenced to be
-cast into the sea. Judicial proceedings of this kind were called [Greek:
-apsychon dikai] (prosecutions of lifeless things) and were conducted
-before the Athenian law-court known as the Prytaneion; they are alluded to
-by AEschines, Pausanias, Demosthenes, and other writers, and briefly
-described in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux and the _Lexicon Decem
-Oratorum Graecorum_ of Valerius Harpokration.
-
-Strictly speaking, the term [Greek: apsychon] should be applied only to an
-inanimate object and not to the brute, which was more correctly called
-[Greek: aphonon] (dumb); but this distinction was not always observed
-either in common parlance or in legal phraseology. The law on this point
-as formulated and expounded by Plato (_De Leg._, IX. 12) was as follows:
-"If a draught animal or any other beast kill a person, unless it be in a
-combat authorized and instituted by the state, the kinsmen of the slain
-shall prosecute the said homicide for murder, and the overseers of the
-public lands ([Greek: agronomoi]), as many as may be commissioned by the
-said kinsmen, shall adjudicate upon the case and send the offender beyond
-the boundaries of the country ([Greek: exorizein], exterminate in the
-literal and original sense of the term). If a lifeless thing shall deprive
-a person of life, provided it may not be a thunderbolt ([Greek: keraunos])
-or other missile ([Greek: belos]) hurled by a god, but an object which the
-said person may have run against or by which he may have been struck and
-slain, then the kinsman immediate to the deceased shall appoint the
-nearest neighbour as judge in order to purify himself as well as his next
-of kin from blood-guiltiness, but the culprit ([Greek: to ophlon]) shall
-be put beyond the boundaries, in the same manner as if it were an animal."
-In the same section it is enacted that if a person be found dead and the
-murderer be unknown, then proclamation shall be made by a herald on the
-market-place forbidding the murderer to enter any sanctuary or the land
-of the slain, and declaring that, if discovered, he shall be put to death
-and his body be thrown unburied beyond the boundaries of the country of
-the person killed. The object of these measures was to appease the Erinnys
-or avenging spirit of the deceased, and to avert the calamities which
-would otherwise be brought upon the land, in accordance with the strict
-law of retribution demanding blood for blood, no matter whether it may
-have been shed wilfully or accidentally. [Cf. AEschylus, _Cho._, 395, where
-this law ([Greek: nomos]) is clearly and strongly affirmed.] The same
-superstitious feeling leads the hunters of many savage tribes to beg
-pardon of bears and other wild animals for killing them and to purify
-themselves by religious rites from the taint incurred by such an act, the
-[Greek: miasma] of murder, as the Greeks called it.
-
-Quite recently in China fifteen wooden idols were tried and condemned to
-decapitation for having caused the death of a man of high military rank.
-On complaint of the family of the deceased the viceroy residing at Fouchow
-ordered the culprits to be taken out of the temple and brought before the
-criminal court of that city, which after due process of law sentenced them
-to have their heads severed from their bodies and then to be thrown into a
-pond. The execution is reported to have taken place in the presence of a
-large concourse of approving spectators and "amid the loud execrations of
-the masses," who seem in their excitement to have "lost their heads" as
-well as the hapless deities.
-
-When the Russian prince Dimitri, the son of Ivan II., was assassinated on
-May 15, 1591, at Uglich, his place of exile, the great bell of that town
-rang the signal of insurrection. For this serious political offence the
-bell was sentenced to perpetual banishment in Siberia, and conveyed with
-other exiles to Tobolsk. After a long period of solitary confinement it
-was partially purged of its iniquity by conjuration and re-consecration
-and suspended in the tower of a church in the Siberian capital; but not
-until 1892 was it fully pardoned and restored to its original place in
-Uglich. A like sentence was imposed by a Russian tribunal on a butting ram
-in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
-
-Mathias Abele von Lilienberg, in his _Metamorphosis Telae Judiciariae_, of
-which the eighth edition was published at Nuremberg in 1712, states that a
-drummer's dog in an Austrian garrison town bit a member of the municipal
-council in the right leg. The drummer was sued for damages, but refused to
-be responsible for the snappish cur and delivered it over to the arm of
-justice. Thereupon he was released, and the dog sentenced to one year's
-incarceration in the Narrenkoetterlein, a sort of pillory or iron cage
-standing on the market-place, in which blasphemers, evil-livers, rowdies
-and other peace-breakers were commonly confined. [The Narrenkoetterlein,
-Narrenkoederl or Kotter formerly on the chief public squares in Vienna are
-described as "Menschenkaefige mit Gittern von Eisen und Holz, bestimmt das
-darin versperrte Individuum dem Spotte des Poebels preiszugeben (zu
-narren)." Schlaeger: _Wiener Skizzen aus dem Mittelalter_, II. 245.]
-Mornacius also relates that several mad dogs, which attacked and tore in
-pieces a Franciscan novice in 1610, were "by sentence and decree of the
-court put to death." It is surely reasonable enough that mad dogs should
-be killed; the remarkable feature of the case is that they should be
-formally tried and convicted as murderers by a legal tribunal, and that no
-account should have been taken of their rabies as an extenuating
-circumstance or ground of acquittal. In such a case the plea of insanity
-would certainly seem to be naturally suggested and perfectly valid.
-
-On the other hand, it is expressly declared in the Avesta that a mad dog
-shall not be permitted to plead insanity in exculpation of itself, but
-shall be "punished with the punishment of a conscious and premeditated
-offence" (_baodho-varsta_), _i.e._ by progressive mutilation,
-corresponding to the number of persons or beasts it has bitten, beginning
-with the loss of its ears, extending to the crippling of its feet and
-ending with the amputation of its tail. This cruel and absurd enactment is
-wholly inconsistent with the kindly spirit shown in the Avesta towards all
-animals recognized as the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially with the
-many measures taken by the Indo-Aryans as a pastoral people for the
-protection of the dog. Indeed, a paragraph immediately following in the
-same chapter commands the Mazdayasnians to treat such a rabid dog
-humanely, and to "wait upon him with medicaments and to try to heal him,
-just as they would care for a righteous man." On this important point
-Avestan legislation is so inconsistent and self-contradictory that one may
-justly suspect the harsh enactments to be later interpolations.
-
-A curious example of imputed crime and its penal consequences is seen in
-the Roman custom of celebrating the anniversary of the preservation of the
-Capitol from the night-attack of the Gauls, not only by paying honour to
-the descendants of the sacred geese, whose cries gave warning of the
-enemy's approach, adorning them with jewels and carrying them about in
-litters, but also by crucifying a dog, as a punishment for the want of
-vigilance shown by its progenitors on that occasion. This imputation of
-merit and demerit was really no more absurd than to visit the sins of the
-fathers on the children, as prescribed by Jewish and other ancient
-lawgivers, or to decree corruption of blood in persons attainted of
-treason, as is still the practice of modern states, or any other theory of
-inherited guilt or scheme of vicarious atonement, that sets the sin of the
-federal head of the race to the account of his remotest posterity and
-relieves them from its penalties only through the suffering and death of
-a wholly innocent person. They are all applications of the barbarous
-principle, which, in primitive society, with its gross conceptions of
-justice, made the entire tribe responsible for the conduct of each of its
-members. The vendetta, which continues to be the unwritten but inviolable
-code of many semi-civilized communities, is based upon the same conception
-of consanguineous solidarity for the perpetration and avenging of crime.
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law, abolished by King Canute, in case
-stolen property was found in the house of a thief, his wife and family,
-even to the infant in the cradle, though it had never taken food (_peah
-hit nafre metes ne abite_), were punished as partakers of his guilt. The
-_Schwabenspiegel_, the oldest digest of South German law, treated as
-accessaries all the domestic animals found in a house, in which a crime of
-violence had been committed, and punished them with death. ["Man soll
-allez daz toetden daz in den huze ist gevonden: leuten und vie, ros und
-rinder, hunde und katzen, ganzen und hundre." Sec. 290.]
-
-Cicero approved of such penalties for political crimes as "severe but wise
-enactments, since the father is thereby bound to the interests of the
-state by the strongest of ties, namely, love for his children." Roman law
-under the empire punished treason with death and then added: "As to the
-sons of traitors, they ought to suffer the same penalty as their parents,
-since it is highly probable that they will sometime be guilty of the same
-crime themselves; nevertheless, as a special act of clemency, we grant
-them their lives, but, at the same time, declare them to be incapable of
-inheriting anything from father or mother or of receiving any gift or
-bequest in consequence of any devise or testament of kinsmen or friends.
-Branded with hereditary infamy and excluded from all hope of honour or of
-property, may they suffer the torture of disgrace and poverty until they
-shall look upon life as a curse and long for death as a kind release."
-This atrocious edict of the emperors Arcadius and Honorius has its
-counterpart in the still more radical code of Pachacutez, the Justinian of
-the ancient Peruvians, which punished adultery with the wife of an Inca by
-putting to death not only the adulteress and her seducer, but also the
-children, slaves and kindred of the culprits, as well as all the
-inhabitants of the city in which the crime was committed, while the city
-itself was to be razed and the site covered with stones.
-
-The principle enunciated by Cicero has also been accepted by modern
-legislators as applicable to high treason. Thus, when Tschech, the
-burgomaster of Storkow, attempted to take the life of Frederic William of
-Prussia, July 26, 1844, he was tried and executed Dec. 14 of the same
-year. On the day after his execution his only daughter, Elizabeth, was
-arrested, and to her inquiry by what right she had been deprived of her
-freedom, the authorities replied that, "according to Prussian law the
-children of a person convicted of high treason and all the members of his
-family, especially if they seemed to be dangerous and to share the
-opinions of their father, can be imprisoned for life or banished from the
-country." The young lady was then exiled to Westphalia, and there placed
-in the custody of an extremely austere parson, until she finally escaped
-to France, and afterwards to Switzerland, where she spent the rest of her
-days.
-
-When the prefects Tatian and Proculus fell into disgrace, Lycia, their
-native land, was deprived of the autonomy it had hitherto enjoyed as a
-Roman province, and its inhabitants were disfranchised and declared
-incapable of holding any office under the empire. So, too, when Joshua
-discovered some of the spoils of Jericho hidden in the tent of Achan, not
-only the thief himself, but also "his sons, and his daughters, and his
-oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, and all that he had,"
-were brought into the valley of Achor, and there stoned with stones and
-burned with fire. About this time, however, such holocausts of justice
-were suppressed among the Jews, and a law enacted that henceforth "the
-fathers shall not be put to death, for the children, neither shall the
-children be put to death for the fathers, every man shall be put to death
-for his own sin;" or, as Jeremiah expresses it figuratively, the
-children's teeth were to be no longer set on edge by the sour grapes
-which their fathers had eaten. Yet the persistency of time-honoured custom
-and its power of overriding new statutes are seen in the fact that,
-several centuries later, at the request of the Gibeonites, whom it had
-become desirable to conciliate, David did not scruple to deliver up to
-them seven of Saul's sons to be hanged for the evil which their father had
-wrought in slaying these foes of Israel. It would have been a parallel
-case if Bismarck had sought to win the friendship and favour of the French
-by giving into their hands the descendants of Bluecher to be guillotined on
-the Place de la Concorde, or, after having made a political pilgrimage to
-Canossa, should surrender the children of Dr. Falk to be racked and burned
-at the stake by the ultramontanes.
-
-According to the current orthodox theology, treason against God, committed
-by our common progenitor, worked "corruption of blood" in the whole human
-race, all the children of men being attainted with guilt in consequence of
-the act of their first parent. This crude and brutal conception of justice
-is the survival of a primitive and barbarous state of society, and it is
-curious to observe how the most highly civilized peoples, who have
-outgrown this notion and set it aside in the secular relations of man to
-man, still cling to it as something sacred and sublime in the spiritual
-relations of man to the deity. Only the all-wise and all-powerful
-sovereign of the universe is supposed to continue to administer law and
-justice on principles which common-sense and the enlightened opinion of
-mankind have long since abrogated and banished from earthly legislation.
-Thus the divine government, instead of keeping pace with the progress of
-human institutions, still corresponds to the ideals of right and
-retribution entertained by savage tribes and the lowest types of mankind.
-
-The horrible mutilations to which criminals were formerly subjected,
-originated in an endeavour to administer strictly even-handed justice.
-What could be fairer or more fit than to punish perjury by cutting off the
-two fingers which the perjurer had held up in taking the violated oath? It
-was a popular belief that the fingers of an undetected perjurer would grow
-out of the grave after death, seeking retributive amputation, as a plant
-seeks the light, and that his ghost would never rest until this penalty
-had been inflicted. (See Heinrich Roch: _Schles. Chron._, p. 267, where a
-case of this kind is recorded.) The Carolina (_constitutio criminalis
-Carolina_), although in many respects an advance on mediaeval penal
-legislation, doomed incendiaries to be burned alive; and an old law, cited
-by Doepler (_Theat. Poen._, II. 271), condemned a man who had dug up and
-removed a boundary stone to be buried in the earth up to his neck and to
-have his head plowed off with a new plow, thus symbolizing in his own
-person the grave offence which he had committed. Ivan Basilovitch, a
-Muscovite prince, ordered that an ambassador, who did not uncover in his
-presence, should have his hat nailed to his head; and it is a feeble
-survival of the same idea of proper punishment that makes the American
-farmer nail the dead hawk to his barn-door, just as in former times it was
-customary to crucify highway robbers at cross-roads.
-
-According to an old Roman law ascribed to Numa Pompilius, the oxen which
-plowed up a boundary stone, as well as their driver, were sacrificed to
-Jupiter Terminus. In the early development of agriculture, and the
-transition from communal to personal property in land, this severe
-enactment was deemed necessary to the protection of the "sacra saxa," by
-which the boundary lines of the fields were defined. Only by making the
-violation of enclosed ground a sacrilege was it possible to prevent
-encroachments upon it, so strong was the lingering prejudice against
-individual possessions of this kind running in the blood of a people
-descended from nomadic tribes of herdsmen, who regarded sedentary
-communities engaged in tilling the soil as their direst foes. The lawgiver
-knew very well that the oxen were involuntary agents, and that the plowman
-alone was culpable; but when a religious atonement is to be made and an
-angry god appeased, moral distinctions determining degrees of
-responsibility are uniformly ignored, and the innocent are doomed to
-suffer with the guilty. The oxen were tainted by the performance of an
-act, in which the exercise of their will was not involved, and must
-therefore be consigned to the offended deity. The same is true of the
-plowman, who did not escape immolation even when the _motio termini_ or
-displacement of the boundary stone occurred unintentionally.
-
-That the feeling, which found expression in such enactments and usages and
-survives in schemes of expiation and vicarious sacrifice, lies scarcely
-skin-deep under the polished surface of our civilization, is evident from
-the force and suddenness with which it breaks out under strong excitement,
-as when Cincinnati rioters burn the court-house because they suspect the
-judges of venality and are dissatisfied with the verdicts of the juries.
-The primitive man and the savage, like the low and ignorant masses of
-civilized communities, do not take into consideration whether the objects
-from which they suffer injury are intelligent agents or not, but wreak
-their vengeance on stocks and stones and brutes, obeying only the rude
-instinct of revenge. The power of restraining these aboriginal
-propensities, and of nicely analyzing actions and studying mental
-conditions in order to ascertain degrees of moral responsibility,
-presupposes a high degree of mental development and refinement and great
-acuteness of psychological perception, and is, in fact, only a recent
-acquisition of a small minority of the human race. The vast bulk of
-mankind will have to pass through a long process of intellectual
-evolution, and rise far above their present place in the ascending scale
-of culture before they attain it.
-
-For this reason Lombroso would abolish trial by jury, which seems to him
-not a sign of progress towards better judicatory methods, but a clumsy
-survival of primitive justice as administered by barbarous tribes and even
-gregarious animals. It makes the administration of justice dependent upon
-popular prejudice and passion, and finds its most violent expression or
-explosion in lynch law, which is only trial by a jury of the whole
-community gone mad. It would certainly be a dismal farce to apply to the
-criminal classes the principle that every man must be judged by his peers.
-In the cantonal courts of Switzerland the verdict of the jury is uniformly
-in favour of the native against the foreigner, no matter what the merits
-of the case may be; and this outrageous perversion of right and equity is
-called patriotism, a term which conveniently sums up and euphemizes the
-general sentiment of Helvetian innkeepers and tradesmen that "the stranger
-within their gates" is their legitimate spoil, and has no other _raison
-d'etre_. In Italy, especially in Naples and Sicily, a thief may be
-sometimes condemned, but a murderer is almost invariably acquitted by the
-jury, whose decision expresses the corrupted moral sense of a people
-accustomed to admire the bandit as a hero and to consider brigandage a
-highly honourable profession.
-
-The childish disposition to punish irrational creatures and inanimate
-objects, which is common to the infancy of individuals and of races, has
-left a distinct trace of itself in that peculiar institution of English
-law known as deodand, and derived partly from Jewish and partly from old
-German usages and traditions. "If a horse," says Blackstone, "or any other
-animal, of its own motion kill as well an infant as an adult, or if a cart
-run over him, they shall in either case be forfeited as deodand." If a
-man, in driving a cart, tumble to the ground and lose his life by the
-wheel passing over him, if a tree fall on a man and cause his death, or if
-a horse kick his keeper and kill him, then the wheel, the tree and the
-horse are deodands _pro rege_, and are to be sold for the benefit of the
-poor.
-
-_Omnia quae movent ad mortem sunt Deo danda_ is the principle laid down by
-Bracton. If therefore a cart-wheel run over a man and kill him, not only
-is the wheel, but also the whole cart to be declared deodand, because the
-momentum of the cart in motion contributed to the man's death; but if the
-shaft fall upon a man and kill him, then only the shaft is deodand, since
-the cart did not participate in the crime. It is also stated, curiously
-enough, that if an infant fall from a cart not in motion and be killed,
-neither the horse nor the cart shall be declared deodand; not so,
-however, if an adult come to his death in this manner. The ground of this
-distinction is not quite clear; although it may arise from the assumption
-that the child had no business there, or that such an accident could not
-have happened to an adult, unless there was something irregular and
-perverse in the conduct of the animal or the vehicle. In the archives of
-Maryland, edited by Dr. William Hand Browne and Miss Harrison in 1887,
-mention is made of an inquest held January 31, 1637, on the body of a
-planter, who "by the fall of a tree had his bloud bulke broken." "And
-furthermore the Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid say that the
-said tree moved to the death of the said John Bryant; and therefore find
-the said tree forfeited to the Lord Proprietor."
-
-According to an old Anglo-Saxon law a sword or other object by which a man
-had been slain, was not regarded as pure (_gesund_) until the crime had
-been expiated, and therefore could not be used, but must be set apart as a
-sacrifice. A sword-cutler would not take such a weapon to polish or repair
-without a certificate that it was _gesund_ or free from homicidal taint,
-so as not to render himself liable for any harm it might inflict, since it
-was supposed to exert a certain magical and malicious influence. Also an
-ancient municipal law of the city of Schleswig stipulated that the builder
-of a house should be held responsible in case any one should be killed by
-a beam, block, rafter or other piece of timber, and pay a fine of nine
-marks, or give the object that had committed the manslaughter to the
-family or kinsmen of the slain. If he failed to do so and built the
-contaminated timber into the edifice, then the owner had to atone for the
-homicide with the whole house. (Cf. Heinrich Brunner: _Deutsche
-Rechtsgeschichte_, II. p. 557, Anm. 31.) A modern survival of this legal
-principle is the notion, current especially among criminals, that any part
-of the body of a deceased person, or better still of an executed murderer,
-exerts a magical and protective power or brings good luck. It is by no
-means uncommon among the peasants and lower classes of Europe to put the
-finger of a dead thief under the threshold in order to protect the house
-homoepathically against theft. The persistency of this superstition is
-shown by the fact that a farmer's hired man named Sier and belonging to
-the hamlet of Heumaden, was tried at Weiden in Bavaria, May 23, 1894, and
-convicted of having exhumed the body of a newly buried child in the
-churchyard of Moosbach and taken out one of its eyes, which he supposed
-would render him invisible to mortal sight like the famous _tarnkappe_ of
-old German mythology, and thus enable him to indulge with impunity his
-propensity to steal. For this sacrilege he was sentenced to one year and
-two months' imprisonment and to the loss of civil rights for three years.
-
-In some of the Scottish islands it is the custom to beach a boat, from
-which a fisherman had been drowned, cursing it for its misdeed and
-letting it dry and fall to pieces in the sun. The boat is guilty of
-manslaughter and must no longer be permitted to sail the sea with innocent
-craft. Scotch law does not seem to have recognized deodand in the strictly
-etymological sense of the term, but only escheat, in other words, the
-confiscated objects were not necessarily applied to pious purposes--_pro
-anima regis et omnium fidelium defunctorum_--but were simply forfeited to
-the king or to the state. This form of confiscation never prevailed so
-generally in Central and Eastern, as in Western Europe. Some German
-communities and territorial sovereigns introduced it from France, but so
-modified the practical application of the principle as to award to the
-injured party the greater portion, in Lueneburg, for example, two-thirds of
-the value of the confiscated animal or object. (_Vide_ Kraut's _Stadtrecht
-von Lueneburg_, No. XCVII. Cited by Von Amira, p. 594.)
-
-Blackstone's theories of the origin of deodands are exceedingly vague and
-unsatisfactory. Evidently the learned author of the _Commentaries_ could
-give no consistent explanation of these vestiges of ancient criminal
-legislation. His statement that they were intended to punish the owner of
-the forfeited property for his negligence, and his further assertion that
-they were "designed, in the blind days of popery, as an expiation for the
-souls of such as were snatched away by sudden death," are equally
-incorrect. In most cases the owner was perfectly innocent and very
-frequently was himself the victim of the accident. He suffered only
-incidentally from a penalty imposed for a wholly different purpose, just
-as a slaveholder incurs loss when his human chattel commits murder and is
-hanged for it. The primal object was to atone for the taking of life in
-accordance with certain crude conceptions of retribution. Under
-hierarchical governments the prominent idea was to appease the wrath of
-God, who otherwise might visit mankind with famine and pestilence and
-divers retaliatory scourges. For the same reason the property of a suicide
-was deodand. Thus the wife and children of the deceased, who may be
-supposed to have already suffered most from the fatal act, were subjected
-to additional punishment for it by being robbed of their rightful
-inheritance. Yet this was by no means the intention of the lawmakers, who
-simply wished to prescribe an adequate atonement for a grievous offence,
-and in seeking to accomplish this main purpose, ignored the effect of
-their action upon the fortunes of the heirs or deemed it a matter of minor
-consideration.
-
-Ancient legislators uniformly regarded a _felo de se_ as a criminal
-against society and treated him as a kind of traitor. The man had enjoyed
-the support and protection of the body-politic during his infancy and
-youth, and, by taking his own life, he shook off the responsibilities and
-shirked the duties devolving upon him as an adult member of the
-commonwealth. This is why self-murder was called felony and as such
-involved forfeiture of goods. Calchas would not permit the body of "the
-mad Ajax," who died by his own hand, to be burned; and the Christian
-Church of to-day refuses to bury in consecrated ground with religious
-rites any person who deliberately cuts short the thread of his existence
-and thus commits treason against the Most High. The Athenians
-ignominiously lopped off the hand of a suicide and buried the guilty
-instrument of his death, as an accursed thing, apart from the rest of the
-interred or incremated body. In some communities all persons over sixty
-years of age have been left free to kill themselves, if they wished to do
-so. They had performed the duties of citizenship and of procreation and
-were permitted to retire in this way, if they saw fit. In very ancient
-times, the magistrates of Massalia (Marseilles, then a Greek colony) are
-said to have kept on hand a supply of poison to be given to any citizen,
-who, on due examination, was found to have good and sufficient reason for
-taking his own life. Suicide was thus legalized and facilitated, and
-thereby rendered honourable, and was perhaps found more convenient and
-economical than to grant pensions or to support paupers. It was a summary
-method of getting rid of those who had finished the struggle for existence
-or failed in it, and in either case might be a burden to themselves or to
-the state. On the other hand, when a suicidal mania seized upon the
-maidens of Miletos, an Ionian city in Caria, and threatened to produce a
-dearth of wives and mothers, the municipal authorities decreed that the
-bodies of all such persons should be exposed naked in the market-place, in
-order that virgin modesty and shame might overcome the desire of death,
-and check a self-destructive passion extremely detrimental to the Milesian
-commonwealth.
-
-It is true, as Blackstone asserts, that the Church claimed deodands as her
-due and put the price of them into her own coffers; but this fact does not
-explain their origin. They were an expression of the same feeling that led
-the public authorities to fill up a well, in which a person had been
-drowned, not as a precautionary measure, but as a solemn act of expiation;
-or that condemned and confiscated a ship, which, by lurching, had thrown a
-man overboard and caused his death.
-
-Deodands were not abolished in England until the reign of Queen Victoria.
-With the exception of some vestiges of primitive legislation still
-lingering in maritime law, they are, in modern codes, one of the latest
-applications of a penal principle, which, in Athens, expatriated stocks
-and stones, and in other countries of Europe excommunicated bugs and sent
-beasts to the stake and to the gallows.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II
-
-MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
-
-
-A striking and significant indication of the remarkable change that has
-come over the spirit of legislation, and more especially of criminal
-jurisprudence, in comparatively recent times, is the fact that whereas, a
-few generations ago, lawgivers and courts of justice still continued to
-treat brutes as men responsible for their misdeeds, and to punish them
-capitally as malefactors, the tendency now-a-days is to regard men as
-brutes, acting automatically or under an insane and irresistible impulse
-to evil, and to plead this innate and constitutional proclivity, in
-prosecution for murder, as an extenuating or even wholly exculpating
-circumstance. Some persons even maintain, as we have already seen, that
-such criminals are diabolically possessed and thus account for their
-inveterate and otherwise incredible perversity on the theory held by the
-highest authorities in the Middle Ages concerning the nature of noxious
-animals.
-
-Mediaeval jurists and judges did not stop to solve intricate problems of
-psycho-pathology nor to sift the expert evidence of the psychiater. The
-legal maxim: _Si duo faciunt idem non est idem_ (if two do the same thing,
-it is not the same) was too fine a distinction for them, even when one of
-the doers was a brute beast. The puzzling knots, which we seek painfully
-to untie and often succeed only in hopelessly tangling, they boldly cut
-with executioner's sword. They dealt directly with overt acts and
-administered justice with a rude and retaliative hand, more accustomed and
-better adapted to clinch a fist and strike a blow than to weigh motives
-nicely in a balance, to measure gradations of culpability, or to detect
-delicate differences in the psychical texture and spiritual qualities of
-deeds. They put implicit faith in Jack Cade's prescription of "hempen
-caudle" and "pap of hatchet" as radical remedies for all forms and degrees
-of criminal alienation and murderous aberration of mind. Phlebotomy was
-the catholicon of the physician and the craze of the jurist; blood-letting
-was regarded as the only infallible cure for all the ills that afflict the
-human and the social body. Doctors of physic and doctors of law vied with
-each other in applying this panacea. The red-streaked pole of the
-barber-surgeon and the reeking scaffold, symbols of venesection as a means
-of promoting the physical and moral health of the community, were the
-appropriate signs of medicine and jurisprudence. Hygeia and Justicia,
-instead of being represented by graceful females feeding the emblematic
-serpent of recuperation or holding with firm and even hand the well-poised
-scales of equity, would have been more fitly typified by two enormous
-leeches gorged with blood.
-
-Even the dead, who should have been hanged, but escaped their due
-punishment, could not rest in their graves until the corpse had suffered
-the proper legal penalty at the hands of the public executioner. Their
-restless ghosts wandered about as vampires or other malicious spooks until
-their crimes had been expiated by digging up their bodies and suspending
-them from the gallows. Culprits, who died on the rack or in prison, were
-brought to the scaffold as though they were still alive. In 1685, a
-were-wolf, supposed to be the incarnation of a deceased burgomaster of
-Ansbach, did much harm in the neighbourhood of that city, preying upon the
-herds and even devouring women and children. With great difficulty the
-ravenous beast was finally killed; its carcass was then clad in a tight
-suit of flesh-coloured cere-cloth, resembling in tint the human skin, and
-adorned with a chestnut brown wig and a long whitish beard; the snout of
-the beast was cut off and a mask of the burgomaster's features substituted
-for it, and the counterfeit presentment thus produced was hanged by order
-of the court. The pelt of the strangely transmogrified wolf was stuffed
-and preserved in the margrave's cabinet of curiosities as a memorial of
-the marvellous event and as ocular proof of the existence of were-wolves.
-
-In Hungary and the Slavic countries of Eastern Europe the public execution
-of vampires was formerly of frequent occurrence, and the superstition,
-which gave rise to such proceedings, still prevails among the rural
-population of those semi-civilized lands. In 1337, a herdsman near the
-town of Cadan came forth from his grave every night, visiting the
-villages, terrifying the inhabitants, conversing affably with some and
-murdering others. Every person, with whom he associated, was doomed to die
-within eight days and to wander as a vampire after death. In order to keep
-him in his grave a stake was driven through his body, but he only laughed
-at this clumsy attempt to impale a ghost, saying: "You have really
-rendered me a great service by providing me with a staff, with which to
-ward off the dogs when I go out to walk." At length it was decided to give
-him over to two public executioners to be burned. We are informed that
-when the fire began to take effect, "he drew up his feet, bellowed for a
-while like a bull and hee-hawed like an ass, until one of the executioners
-stabbed him in the side, so that the blood oozed out and the evil finally
-ceased."
-
-Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter's wife, who was reputed to
-be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
-refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
-The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
-remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
-form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
-persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
-and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
-her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
-but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
-abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
-this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
-whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
-_auto da fe_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
-neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
-when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
-
-Doepler cites also the case of Stephen Huebner of Trautenau, who wandered
-about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
-individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
-decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
-of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
-His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
-
-In 1573, the parliament of Dole published a decree permitting the
-inhabitants of the Franche Comte to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
-loup-garou, which infested that province; "notwithstanding the existing
-laws concerning the chase," the people were empowered to "assemble with
-javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
-said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
-and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty." The hunt seems
-to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
-tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
-Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
-little children "even on Friday." The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
-slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
-mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
-infants on a _jour maigre_.
-
-Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas a Becket to appear before the Star
-Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
-and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
-worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
-the winds.
-
-When Stephen VI. succeeded to the tiara in 896, one of his first acts was
-to cause the body of his predecessor, Formosus, to be exhumed and brought
-to trial on the charge of having unlawfully and sacrilegiously usurped
-the papal dignity. A writ of summons was issued in due form and the corpse
-of the octogenarian pope, which had lain already eight months in the
-grave, was dug up, re-arrayed in full pontificals and seated on a throne
-in the council-hall of St. Peter's, where a synod had been convened to
-adjudicate upon the case. No legal formality was omitted in this strange
-procedure and a deacon was appointed to defend the accused, although the
-synodical jury was known to be packed and the verdict predetermined.
-Formosus was found guilty and condemned to deposition. No sooner was the
-sentence pronounced than the executioners thrust him from the throne,
-stripped him of his pontifical robes and other ensigns of office, cut off
-the three benedictory fingers of his right hand, dragged him by the feet
-out of the judgment-hall and threw his body "as a pestilential thing"
-(_uti quoddam mephiticum_) into the Tiber. Not until several months later,
-after Stephen himself had been strangled in prison, were the mutilated and
-putrefied remains of Formosus taken out of the water and restored to the
-tomb. The Athenian Prytaneum, as we have already seen, was guilty of the
-childishness of prosecuting inanimate objects, but it never violated the
-sepulchre for the purpose of inflicting post-humous punishment on corpses.
-The perpetration of this brutality was reserved for the Papal See.
-
-From the standpoint of ancient and mediaeval jurisprudents the overt act
-alone was assumed to constitute the crime; the mental condition of the
-criminal was never or at least very seldom taken into consideration. It is
-remarkable how long this crude and superficial conception of justice
-prevailed, and how very recently even the first attempts have been made to
-establish penal codes on a philosophic basis. The punishableness of an
-offence is now generally recognized as depending solely upon the sanity
-and rationality of the offender. Crime, morally and legally considered,
-presupposes, not perfect, for such a thing does not exist, but normal
-freedom of the will on the part of the agent. Where this element is
-wanting, there is no culpability, whatever may have been the consequences
-of the act. Modern criminal law looks primarily to the psychical origin of
-the deed, and only secondarily to its physical effects; mediaeval criminal
-law ignored the origin altogether, and regarded exclusively the effects,
-which it dealt with on the homoeopenal principle of _similia similibus
-puniantur_, for the most part blindly and brutally applied.
-
-Mancini, Lombroso, Garofalo, Albrecht, Benedikt, Buechner, Moleschott,
-Despine, Fouillee, Letourneau, Maudsley, Bruce Thompson, Nicholson,
-Minzloff, Notovich and other European criminal lawyers, physiologists and
-anthropologists have devoted themselves with peculiar zeal and rare
-acuteness to the study and solution of obscure and perplexing problems of
-psycho-pathological jurisprudence, and have drawn nice and often overnice
-distinctions in determining degrees of personal responsibility. Judicial
-procedure no longer stops with testimony establishing the bald facts in
-the case, but admits also the evidence of the expert alienist in order to
-ascertain to what extent the will of the accused was free or functionally
-normal in its operation. Here it is not a question of raving madness or of
-drivelling idiocy, perceptible to the coarsest understanding and the
-crassest ignorance; but the slightest morbid disturbance, impairing the
-full and healthy exercise of the mental faculties, must be examined and
-estimated. If "privation of mind" and "irresistible force," says Zupetta,
-are exculpatory, then "partial vitiation of mind" and "semi-irresistible
-force" are entitled to the same or at least to proportional consideration.
-There are states of being which are mutually contradictory and exclusive
-and cannot co-exist, such as life and death. A partial state of life or
-death is impossible; such expressions as half-alive and half-dead are
-hyperbolical figures of speech used for purely rhetorical purposes; taken
-literally, they are simply absurd. It is not so, however, with states of
-mind. The intellect, whose soundness is the first condition of
-accountability, may be perfectly clear, manifesting itself in all its
-fulness and power, or it may be partially obscured. So, too, the will,
-whose self-determination is the second condition of accountability, may
-assert itself with complete freedom and untrammelled force, or it may act
-under stress and with imperfect volition. Moral coercion, whether arising
-from external influences, abnormities of the physical organism or defects
-of the mental constitution, is not less real because it is not easy to
-detect and may not be wholly irresistible. For this reason, it involves no
-contradiction in terms and is not absurd to call an action half-conscious,
-half-voluntary, or half-constrained. "Partial vitiation of mind" is a
-state distinctly recognized in psychiatrical science. In like manner,
-there is no essential incongruity in affirming that an impulse may be the
-result of a "semi-irresistible force." But these mental conditions and
-forces do not manifest themselves with equal obviousness and intensity in
-all cases; sometimes they are scarcely appreciable; again they verge upon
-"absolute privation of mind" and "wholly irresistible force;" and it is
-the duty of the judge to adjust the penalty to the gradations of guilt as
-determined by the greater or less freedom of the agent.
-
-The same process of reasoning would lead to the admission of
-quasi-vitiations of mind and quasi-irresistible forces as grounds of
-exculpation. Thus one might go on analyzing and refining away human
-responsibility, and reducing all crime to resultants of mental
-derangement, until every malefactor would come to be looked upon, not as a
-culprit to be delivered over to the sharp stroke of the headsman or the
-safe custody of the jailer, but as an unfortunate victim of morbid states
-and uncontrollable impulses, to be consigned to the sympathetic care of
-the psychiater.
-
-Italian anthropologists and jurisprudents have been foremost and gone
-farthest, both theoretically and practically, in this reaction from
-mediaeval conceptions of crime and its proper punishment. This violent
-recoil from extreme cruelty to excessive commiseration is due, in a great
-measure, to the Italian temperament, to a peculiar gentleness and
-impressionableness of character, which, combined with an instinctive
-aversion to whatever shocks the senses and mars the pleasure of the
-moment, are apt to degenerate into shallow sentimentality and sickly
-sensibility, thereby enfeebling and perverting the moral sense and
-distorting all ideas of right and justice. To minds thus constituted the
-cool and deliberate condemnation of a human being to the gallows is an
-atrocity, in comparison with which a fatal stab in the heat of passion or
-under strong provocation seems a light and venial transgression. This
-maudlin sympathy with the guilty living man, who is in danger of suffering
-for his crime, to the entire forgetfulness of the innocent dead man, the
-victim of his anger or cupidity, pervades all classes of society, and has
-stimulated the ingenuity of lawyers and legislators to discover mitigating
-moments and extenuating circumstances and other means of loosening and
-enlarging the intricate meshes of the penal code so as to permit the
-culprit to escape. To this end they eagerly seized upon the doctrine of
-evolution and endeavoured to seek the origin of crime in hereditary
-propensities, atavistic recurrences, physical degeneracies and other
-organic fatalities, for which no one can be held personally responsible,
-and constructed upon the basis of the most recent scientific researches a
-penological system giving free scope and full gratification to this
-pitying and palliating disposition.
-
-But, although the Italians have been pioneers in this movement, it has not
-been confined to them; it extends to all civilized nations, and expresses
-a general tendency of the age. Even the Germans, those leaders in theory
-and laggards in practice, whose studies and speculations have illustrated
-all forms and phases of judicial procedure, but who adhere so
-conservatively to ancient methods and resist so stubbornly the tides of
-reform in their own courts have yielded on this point. They no longer
-regard insanity and idiocy as the only grounds of exemption from
-punishment, but include in the same category "all morbid disturbances of
-mental activity," and "all states of mind in which the free determination
-of the will is not indeed wholly destroyed, but only partially impaired."
-In order to realize the radical changes that have taken place in this
-direction within a relatively recent period, it will suffice merely to
-compare the present criminal code of the German Empire with the Austrian
-code of 1803, the Bavarian code of 1813, and the Prussian code of 1851. It
-must be remembered, too, that these changes have been effected under the
-drift of public opinion in spite of the political preponderance of Prussia
-and her strong bureaucratic influence, which has always been exerted in
-favour of severe penalties, and shown slight consideration for individual
-frailties and criminal idiosyncrasies in inflicting punishment. As the
-stronghold of a stolid and supercilious squirearchy (Junkerthum) in
-Germany, Prussia has stubbornly resisted to the last every reformatory
-movement in civil and social, and especially in criminal legislation.
-
-A recent decision of the supreme court of the German Empire (pronounced in
-the summer of 1894) seems to put a check upon this tendency by rejecting
-the plea of "moral insanity" in the extenuation of crime. As a matter of
-fact, however, the question whether such a state of mind as "moral
-insanity" exists or can exist has not yet been settled; and so long as
-psychiaters do not agree as to the actuality or possibility of this
-anomalous mental condition, courts of justice may very properly refuse to
-take it into consideration or to allow it to exert the slightest influence
-upon their judgment in the infliction of judicial punishment. Moral
-insanity, as usually defined, involves a disturbance of the moral
-perceptions and a derangement of the emotional nature, without impairing
-the distinctively intellectual faculties. The supposed victim of this
-hypothetical form of madness is capable of thinking logically and often
-shows remarkable astuteness in forming his plans and executing his
-criminal purposes, but seems utterly destitute of the moral sense and of
-all the finer feelings of humanity, performing the most atrocious deeds
-without hesitation and remembering them without the slightest compunction.
-In moral stolidity and the lack of susceptibility he is on a level with
-the lowest savage. German psychiaters, on the whole, are inclined to
-regard such persons, not as morally insane, but as morally degenerate and
-depraved; and German jurists and judges are not disposed to admit such
-vitiation of character as an extenuating circumstance, especially at a
-time when criminals of this class are on the increase and are banded
-together to overthrow civilized society and to introduce an era of anarchy
-and barbarism. The decision of the German judicatory is therefore not
-reactionary, but merely precautionary, and simply indicates a wise
-determination to keep the administration of criminal law unencumbered by
-theories, which science has not yet fully established and which at present
-can only serve to paralyze the arm of retributive justice.
-
-Mediaeval penal justice sought to inflict the greatest possible amount of
-suffering on the offender and showed a diabolical fertility of invention
-in devising new methods of torture even for the pettiest trespasses. The
-monuments of this barbarity may now be seen in European museums in the
-form of racks, thumbkins, interlarded hares, Pomeranian bonnets, Spanish
-boots, scavenger's daughters, iron virgins and similar engines of cruelty.
-Until quite recently an iron virgin, with its interior full of long and
-sharp spikes, was exhibited in a subterranean passage at Nuremberg, on the
-very spot where it is supposed to have once performed its horrible
-functions; and in Munich this inhuman instrument of punishment was in
-actual use as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
-criminal code of Maria Theresa, published in 1769, contained forty-five
-large copperplate engravings, illustrating the various modes of torture
-prescribed in the text for the purpose of extorting confession and
-evidently designed to serve as object lessons for the instruction of the
-tormentor and the intimidation of the accused. That Prussia was the first
-country in Germany to abolish judicial torture was due, not to the
-progressive spirit of the nation or of its tribunals, but solely to the
-superior enlightenment and energy of Frederic the Great, who effected this
-reform arbitrarily and against the will of jurists and judges by
-cabinet-orders issued in 1740 and 1745. Crimes which women are under
-peculiar temptation to commit, were punished with extraordinary severity.
-Thus the infanticide was buried alive, a small tube communicating with the
-outer air being placed in her mouth in order to prolong her life and her
-agony. A case of this kind is recorded in the proceedings of the
-"Malefiz-Gericht" or criminal court of Ensisheim in Alsatia under the date
-of February 3, 1570. In 1401, an apprentice, who stole from his master
-five pfennigs (then as now the smallest coin of Germany and worth about
-the fifth of a cent), was condemned to have both his ears cut off.
-Incredible barbarities of this kind were practised by some of the best and
-noblest men of that age. Thus Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who was pre-eminent
-among his contemporaries for the purity of his life and the benevolence of
-his character, did not hesitate to condemn Fra Tommaso di Mileto, a
-Franciscan monk, to be walled up alive, because he entertained heretical
-notions concerning the sinfulness of eating meat on Friday, and expressed
-doubts touching the worship of images, indulgences, the supreme and
-infallible authority of the pope, and the real presence in the eucharist.
-This cruel sentence, a striking illustration of the words of Lucretius,
-
- "Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,"
-
-was pronounced December 16, 1564, as follows: "I condemn you to be walled
-up in a place enclosed by four walls, where, with anguish of heart and
-abundance of tears, you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences
-committed against the majesty of God, and the holy mother Church and the
-religion of St. Francis, the founder of your order." A bishop, who should
-impose such a punishment now-a-days, would be very properly declared
-insane and divested of his office.
-
-Much ridicule has been cast upon the so-called "Blue Laws" of Connecticut
-on account of the narrowness and pettiness of their prevailing spirit.
-From our present point of view they are absurd and in many respects
-atrocious, but compared with the penal codes of that time they mark a
-great advance in human legislation. They reduced the number of crimes,
-then punishable in England by death, from two hundred and twenty-three to
-fourteen. In the mother-country, as late as the seventeenth century,
-counterfeiters and issuers of false coin were condemned to be boiled to
-death in oil by slow degrees. The culprit was suspended over the cauldron
-and gradually let down into it, first boiling the feet, then the legs and
-so on, until all the flesh was separated from the bones and the body
-reduced to a skeleton. The Puritans of New England, relentless as they
-were in their dealings with sectaries, were never so ruthless as this; nor
-is it probable that they would have inflicted capital punishment upon
-their own "stubborn and rebellious sons," or upon persons who "worship
-any other God but the Lord God," had it not been for precedents recorded
-in laws enacted by a semi-civilized people thousands of years ago and
-supposed to have been dictated by divine wisdom. They failed to perceive
-the incongruity of attempting to rear a democratic commonwealth on
-theocratic foundations and made the fatal mistake of planning their
-structure after what they regarded as the perfect model of the Jewish
-Zion.
-
-If we compare these barbarities with the law recently enacted by the
-legislature of the state of New York, whereby capital punishment is to be
-inflicted as quickly and painlessly as possible by means of electricity,
-we shall be able to appreciate the immense difference between the mediaeval
-and the modern spirit in the conception and execution of penal justice.
-
-A point of practical importance, which the criminal anthropologist has to
-consider is the relation of moral to penal responsibility. If there is no
-freedom of the will and the commission of crime is the necessary result of
-physiological idiosyncrasies, hereditary predispositions, brachycephalous,
-dolichocephalous or microcephalous peculiarities, anomalies of cerebral
-convolution, or other anatomical asymmetries, over which the individual
-has no control and by which his destiny is determined, then he is
-certainly not morally responsible for his conduct. But is he on this
-account to be exempt from punishment? The vast majority of criminalists
-answer this question unhesitatingly in the negative, declaring that penal
-legislation is independent of metaphysical opinion, and that punishment is
-proper and imperative so far as it is essential to the protection and
-preservation of society. If the infliction of the penalties depriving a
-man of his freedom or his life is found to secure these ends, it is the
-duty of the tribunals established for the administration of justice to
-impose them without troubling themselves about the mental condition of the
-culprit or stopping to discuss problems which belong to the province of
-the psychiater. Legal tribunals are not offices in which candidates for
-the insane asylum are examined or certificates of admission to
-reformatories issued, but are organized as a terror to evil-doers in the
-general interests of society, and all their decisions should have this
-object in view. If a madman is not hanged for murder, it is solely because
-such a procedure would exert no deterring influence upon other madmen;
-society protects itself, in cases of this kind, by depriving the dangerous
-individual of his liberty and thus preventing him from doing harm; but it
-has no right to inflict upon him wanton and superfluous suffering. Even if
-it should be deemed desirable to kill him, the method of his removal
-should be such as to cause the least possible pain and publicity. Here,
-too, the welfare of society is the determinative factor.
-
-This doctrine reduces confirmed criminals to the condition of ferocious
-beasts and venomous reptiles, and logically demands that they should be
-eliminated for precisely the same reason that noxious animals are
-exterminated, although neither the human nor the animal creatures are to
-blame for the perniciousness of their inborn proclivities and natural
-instincts. In the eyes of Courcelle-Seneuil a prison is a "kind of
-menagerie"; Naquet, the French chemist and senator, goes still farther,
-declaring that men are no more culpable for being criminal than vitriol is
-for being corrosive, and adding that it is our own fault if we put this
-stuff into our tea and are poisoned by it. The same writer maintains that
-"there is no more demerit in being perverse than in being cross-eyed or
-hump-backed." In a recent lecture on criminal jurisprudence and biology
-Professor Benedikt cites the case of a Moravian robber and murderer, whose
-brain was found on dissection to resemble that of a beast of prey and who
-was therefore, in the opinion of the eminent Viennese authority, no more
-responsible for his bloody deeds than is a lion or a tiger for its
-ravages. The corollary to this anatomical demonstration is that one should
-treat such a man as a lion or a tiger and shoot him on the spot. Atavistic
-relapses, defective cerebral development and other abnormities
-undoubtedly occur in criminals, whose acts may be traced, in some degree,
-to these physical imperfections and therefore be pathologically stimulated
-and partially necessitated by them. On the other hand, there are thousands
-of persons with equally small and unsymmetrical craniums, who do not
-commit crime, but remain respectable, safe, and useful members of society.
-
-Lombroso discovers in habitual malefactors a tendency to tattoo their
-bodies; but this kind of cuticular ornamentation indicates merely a low
-development of the aesthetic sense, a barbarous conception of the beautiful
-or what would be called bad taste, and has not the slightest genetic or
-symptomatic connection with crime and the proclivity to perpetrate it. As
-a means of embellishing the exterior man it may be rude and unrefined, but
-after all it is only skin-deep, and does not extend to the moral
-character. Honest people of the lower classes take pleasure in disfiguring
-themselves in this way, and soldiers and sailors, who are very far from
-furnishing the largest percentage of criminals, are especially addicted to
-it, simply because they find ample leisure in the barracks and the
-forecastle to undergo this slow and painful process of what they deem
-adornment. According to Lombroso criminals have as a rule thick heads of
-hair and thin beards; but as the majority of them are comparatively young,
-these phenomena are by no means remarkable. He has also found that the
-hair of such persons is usually black or dark chestnut; had his
-investigations been carried on in Norway and Sweden instead of in Italy,
-he would have certainly come to the conclusion that flaxen hair is an
-index of a criminal character.
-
-It would be difficult to deny the existence of a constitutionally criminal
-class, a persistently perverse element, which is the born foe of all law
-and order, at war with every form of social and political organization and
-whose permanent attitude of mind is that of the Irishman, who, on landing
-in New York, inquired: "Have ye a government here?" and, on receiving an
-affirmative answer, replied, "Then I'm agin' it." Criminal anthropologists
-have been especially earnest in their endeavours to define this pernicious
-type and to determine the physiological and physiognomical features, which
-characterize and constitute it. This line of research is unquestionably in
-the right direction, but as a reaction against barren scholastic
-speculations and brutal penal codes has been carried to excess by
-enthusiastic specialists and led to broad generalizations and hasty
-deductions from insufficient data. Taine's definition of man as "an animal
-of a higher species, that produces poems and systems of philosophy, as
-silkworms spin cocoons and bees secrete honeycomb," applies with equal
-force to the vicious side of human nature. Criminal propensities, as well
-as creative powers, are the resultants of race, temperament, climate,
-food, organism, environment and other pre-natal and post-natal influences
-and agencies, to which the individual did not voluntarily subject himself
-and from which he cannot escape. The acts, therefore, which he performs,
-whether good or evil, are as independent of his will as the colour of his
-hair or the shape of his nose; for while they are apparently volitional
-impulses, the will itself, from which they seem to proceed, is determined
-by forces as fixed and free from his control as are those which render him
-blue-eyed or snub-nosed.
-
-The penological application of this philosophical principle has given rise
-to numerous theories concerning the nature and origin of crime. Lombroso
-and his disciples, as we have already intimated, attribute it to atavism
-or the survival in the individual of the animal instincts and low morals
-of the aboriginal barbarian. The criminal is simply a savage let loose in
-a civilized community and ignoring the ethical conceptions developed by
-ages of culture and performing actions that would have seemed perfectly
-proper and praiseworthy in the eyes of our pre-historic ancestors. The
-hero of the Palaeolithic age is the brigand and cut-throat of to-day. The
-criminal type is nothing but a reversion to the primitive type of the
-race, and the representatives of this school of anthropologists have been
-untiring in their efforts to discover physical and moral characteristics
-common to both: long arms like chimpanzees, four circumvolutions of the
-frontal lobes of the brain like the large carnivora, small cranial
-capacity like the cave-men, canine teeth like anthropoid apes and a simian
-nose. This analogy extends to the eyes, the ears, the hair, and even to
-the internal organs, the liver, the heart and the stomach, and the
-diseases by which they are affected. It has also been observed that
-assassins are brachycephalous and thieves dolichocephalous. Marro
-maintains that in many cases metaphors express real facts and embody the
-common conclusions of mankind based upon centuries of observation:
-swindlers have a foxy look, long-fingered persons are naturally thievish,
-whereas a club-fisted fellow is pretty sure to have a pugnacious
-disposition, and to be a born rough. Nevertheless social surroundings,
-educational influences and other outward circumstances are important
-factors, not so much in changing the character as in giving it direction;
-the same cerebral constitution and consequent innate predisposition may
-make a man a hero or a bravo, a dashing soldier like Phil Sheridan, or a
-daring robber like Fra Diavolo, according to the place of his birth and
-the nature of his environment.
-
-In common discourse we speak of atrabiliary, spleeny, choleric, or even
-stomachous persons, but such expressions are, in most cases, survivals of
-antiquated beliefs concerning the functions of certain physical organs.
-Hypochondria has no more originary connection with the cartilage of the
-breastbone than with the cartilage of the ear. In the literal sense of the
-terms a large-brained man is not necessarily of superior intellectual
-power any more than a large-hearted man is naturally generous or a
-large-handed man instinctively grasping. So, too, the theory that
-intelligence and morality are in direct proportion to the size and
-symmetry of the encephalon is not sustained by facts; at least the
-exceptions to the rule are so many and so remarkable as to render it
-extremely misleading and therefore of little practical value as a
-scientific principle. Gambetta's brain, for example, weighed only 1294
-grammes, being fifty-eight grammes less in weight than that of the average
-Parisian, and was so abnormally irregular in its configuration as to seem
-actually deformed. Any physiologist, says Dr. Manouvrier, who should come
-across such a skull in a museum, would unhesitatingly pronounce it to be
-that of a savage. The third frontal circumvolution of the left lobe of his
-brain had in the posterior part a supplementary fold said by some to be
-the organ of speech and by others to be the organ of theft; perhaps both
-combined in the ability of the orator to steal away men's hearts, as
-Antony says of the seductive eloquence of Brutus. The distinguished
-physiologist Bichat was an ardent advocate of this doctrine of the causal
-connection between cranial capacity and symmetry and vigorous and
-well-balanced mental faculties, but after his death his own cranium was
-found to be conspicuously lacking in the very characteristics which he
-deemed so essential to man as a moral and intellectual being. The late
-German professor Bischoff based his argument against the higher education
-of woman on the fact that the average female brain weighs only 1272
-grammes, and asserted that a person with such a light encephalon must be
-organically incompetent to master the various branches of study taught in
-our universities. A post-mortem examination proved his own brain to be
-considerably inferior in weight to that of the average woman.
-
-Careful investigations would doubtless furnish additional examples of this
-comical application of the _argumentum ad hominem_ in refutation of the
-notion that intellectual capacity is determined by the bulk of the brain
-or the shape of the skull. Ugo Foscolo, one of the most celebrated of
-modern Italian poets, had a cranium, which, according to this standard of
-appreciation, ought to have belonged to an idiot. On the other hand, the
-brain of the "Hottentot Venus," examined by Gratiolet, far surpassed in
-the symmetry of both hemispheres and the perfection of its circumvolutions
-the normal brains of the Caucasian race. The same phenomenon has been
-observed, although in a less striking manner, occasionally in cretins and
-quite often in criminals. Character is the resultant of a multitude of
-combined forces, the great majority of which are still unknown and perhaps
-unknowable quantities. The impulse given by each must be exactly estimated
-in order to predetermine the joint effect. No factor which contributes to
-its formation must be overlooked, and the acceptance of any one of them,
-however important it may seem to be, as the basis on which to reform and
-reconstruct our penal legislation, would be premature and pernicious. This
-hobby-horsical tendency, which is the vice of every specialist, is now the
-besetting sin of criminal anthropologists, each of whom is firmly
-convinced that he can reach the goal only on his own garran.
-
-"The more advanced criminalists," says Professor Von Kirchenheim, "are
-becoming thoroughly convinced that the penal codes of to-day do not
-correspond to the criminal world of to-day. No science has remained so
-deeply rooted and grounded in scholasticism as jurisprudence; and this
-evil is most clearly perceptible in the province of criminal law. The
-necessity of a change in our penal legislation has already made itself
-widely felt. The contest with crime must now be carried on in a different
-manner from what it was when men waged war with bows and arrows; modern
-criminality must be fought, as it were, with repeating rifles." In other
-words, we can never suppress crime by meeting it with bludgeons and
-boomerangs and other rude implements of barbarous warfare, but must
-encounter it with the finest and most effective weapons of precision,
-which the armoury of modern science can put into our hands. Society has
-outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or
-retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most
-enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and
-is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty
-swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. That this first
-emancipatory effort should be somewhat clumsy, and occasionally attended
-by comical casualties and even serious disasters, lies in the very nature
-of the case. It is evident, too, that the antiquated and utterly
-irrational methods now employed for the suppression of crime tend directly
-to increase it. It is the aim of the positive, in distinction from the
-classical school of criminalists to discover the real causes of criminal
-actions, and thus to endeavour to eradicate or neutralize them. A casual
-criminal, for example, whom external conditions, accidental circumstances,
-sudden temptations or bad influences have led astray, should not be
-treated in the same manner, although guilty of the same overt act, as the
-habitual or constitutional criminal, whose wrong-doing arises from a
-diseased, ill-balanced or undeveloped mental or physical organization, and
-is therefore an inborn and perhaps irresistible proclivity. The latter is
-hardly responsible for his conduct, and the possibility of reforming him
-is slight. The only proper thing to do with such a culprit is to render
-him personally harmless to society either by death or perpetual
-incarceration, and to prevent him from propagating his kind. The law of
-the survival of the fittest through selection suggests as its necessary
-sequence the suppression of the unfittest through sterilization. Nature
-has her own effective and relentless method of attaining this desirable
-result; but man is constantly thwarting her beneficent purposes by all
-sorts of pernicious schemes originating in factitious sentimentalism and
-maudlin sympathy, which under the plea of philanthropy tend to foster and
-perpetuate moral monstrosities to the discomfort and detriment of
-civilized society and the permanent deterioration of the race. To sentence
-persons of this class to eight or ten years' imprisonment and then to turn
-them loose again as a constant source of peril to mankind, is the greatest
-folly that any tribunal can possibly commit. It is a wrong done both to
-the criminal and to the community of which he is a member. The penalties
-imposed by the law should be determined not solely by the enormity of the
-crime, but chiefly by the character of the criminal. Paradoxical as such
-a conclusion may be, it is nevertheless a strictly logical deduction from
-the premises, that the more corrupt he is by his physical constitution and
-therefore the less culpable he is from a moral point of view, the more
-severe should be the sentence pronounced upon him. Where the vicious
-propensity is in the blood and beyond the reach of moral or penal
-purgations, the only safety is in the elimination of the individual, just
-as the only remedy for a gangrened limb is amputation. We ridicule ancient
-and mediaeval courts of justice for prosecuting bugs and beasts, but future
-generations will condemn as equally absurd and outrageous our judicial
-treatment of human beings, who can no more help perpetrating deeds of
-violence, under given conditions, than locusts and caterpillars can help
-consuming crops to the injury of the husbandman, or wild beasts can help
-rending and devouring their prey. It is also interesting to know that in
-former times the animal was not punished capitally because it was supposed
-to have incurred guilt, but as a memorial of the occurrence, or in the
-language of canonical law: _Non propter culpam sed propter memoriam facti
-pecus occiditur_. It was put to death not because it was culpable, but
-because it was harmful; and this is the ground on which the radical wing
-of criminal anthropologists would repress and eliminate a vicious person
-without regard to his mental soundness or moral responsibility; to use
-Garofalo's metaphor he is a microbe injurious to the social organism and
-must be destroyed.
-
-Lombroso carries his theory of the innateness, hereditability and
-ineradicableness of criminal propensities so far as to affirm that
-"education cannot change those who are born with perverse instincts," and
-to despair of correcting an obstinate bias of this sort even in a child.
-In accordance with this idea his disciple, Le Bon, proposes to "deport to
-distant countries all professional criminals or persistent relapsers into
-vice (_recidivistes_) together with their posterity," and would thus
-practically revive the barbarous principle of visiting the sins of the
-fathers upon the children, although he does not regard their conduct as
-sinful in the sense of being a voluntary transgression of the moral law,
-but as the result of a transmitted taint and organic deficiency, for which
-the individual is in no wise responsible. It is hardly necessary to add
-that this doctrine is not sustained by the statistics of reformatories,
-houses of refuge and similar institutions, which have now taken the place
-of the prison and the scaffold in the case of juvenile offenders.
-
-Those who look upon crime as a pathological phenomenon find a striking
-illustration and strong confirmation of their views in violations of the
-law committed under the impulse of hypnotic suggestion. Some maintain that
-all acts originating in this manner are purely automatic, and acquit the
-person performing them of all moral and legal responsibility, since they
-express the will and purpose of the hypnotizer, who alone should be held
-accountable. Others hold that the man, who consents to be hypnotized and
-thus voluntarily surrenders his will-power and permits himself to be used
-as an instrument for the perpetration of crime, should be punished for his
-offences and not allowed to go scot-free by pleading the _force majeure_
-of hypnotic suggestion. The liability to punishment, it is justly argued,
-would be a safeguard to society by putting a wholesome and effective check
-on hypnotic experimentations. There is at least no reason why the
-hypnotized subject should not be called to account for accomplicity. Any
-passion may become automatic and irresistible by long indulgence and
-assiduous cultivation, so that the man is overmastered by it and cannot
-help yielding to it under strong temptation; but the victim of a vicious
-habit has no right to urge the force of an evil propensity in exculpation
-of himself. The inborn or inveterate badness of a man's character may
-explain, but cannot excuse his bad conduct in the impartial and inexorable
-eye of justice. So, too, he who sins against his own worthiness and
-dignity as a rational being by choosing to annul his power of
-self-determination as a voluntary agent and become a helpless tool in the
-hands of another, ought not wholly to escape the consequences of his
-folly. That the hypnotizer should be made fully responsible for the
-realization of his suggestions, no representative of either the positive
-or classical school of criminalists would probably deny. To take a man's
-life by means of hypnotic suggestion is as truly subornation to murder as
-to hire an assassin to plunge a dagger into his heart.
-
-As regards hypnotism itself, it would be strange enough if we should
-discover in it the real scientific basis of witchcraft, and modern
-legislation should prosecute and punish hypnotizers as mediaeval
-legislation prosecuted and punished sorcerers. The sympathetic influence
-of a morbidly imaginative mind upon the body in directing the currents of
-nervous energy and increasing the flow of blood towards particular points
-of the physical organism, so as to produce stigmata and similar abnormal
-phenomena, has long been recognized as an adequate explanation of much
-mediaeval and modern miracle-mongering. It would now seem as if hypnotism,
-or the magnetic influence of one man's will upon another man's mind and
-body were destined to furnish the key to still greater marvels and reveal
-the true nature and origin of what has hitherto passed for divine
-inspiration or diabolical possession. Charcot, Renaut, Fowler and other
-eminent neuropathologists have conclusively shown that certain forms of
-hysteria sometimes produce tumors, ulcers, muscular atrophy, paralysis of
-the limbs and like affections apparently organic, but really nervous. In
-such cases any kind of faith-cure, in which the patient has confidence,
-prayer, the laying on of hands, the water of Lourdes or of St. Ignatius,
-medals of St. Benedict, scapularies of the Virgin, seraphic girdles, a
-pilgrimage to the shrine of a saint or contact with a holy relic may prove
-far more efficacious than drugs and are therefore recommended by priests
-and occasionally even prescribed by physicians, who are far too
-enlightened to regard such healings as miraculous or supernatural. The
-success of scientific research in disclosing the physical basis of
-intellectual life is gradually undermining the foundations of so-called
-spiritualism, and rendering it more and more impossible to mistake
-symptoms of chlorosis and hysterical weakness for spiritual gifts and
-signs of God's special favour. Sickly women are no longer treated as
-seeresses and their vague and incoherent sayings treasured as oracular
-utterances.
-
-One of the chief difficulties encountered by those who seek to frame and
-administer penal laws on psycho-pathological principles arises from the
-fact that no one has ever yet been able to give an exact and adequate
-definition of insanity. However easy it may be to recognize the grosser
-varieties of mental disorder, it is often impossible even for an expert to
-detect it in its subtler forms, or to draw a hard and fast line between
-sanity and insanity. An eminent alienist affirms that very few persons we
-meet in the counting-room, on the street or in society, or with whom we
-enjoy pleasant intercourse at their firesides, are of perfectly sound
-mind. Nearly every one is a little touched; some molecule of the brain has
-turned into a maggot; there is some topic that cannot be introduced
-without making the portals of the mind grate on their golden hinges,--some
-point at which we are forced to say,--
-
- "O, that way madness lies; let me shun that."
-
-It is possible, however, that this very opinion may be a fixed idea or
-symptomatic eccentricity of the alienist himself. The theory that all men
-are monomaniacs may be merely his peculiar monomania. Still there is
-unquestionably this much truth in it, that nearly every person has
-developed some faculty at the expense of the others and thus destroyed his
-mental equilibrium. Every tendency of this kind, which is not checked or
-balanced and in some way rounded off in the growth of the character,
-becomes morbidly strong and leads to a sort of insanity. The specialist is
-always exposed to this danger of growing into a man of one idea; his
-monomania may be in the direction of valuable research or in the pursuit
-of a foolish whim, resulting in useful inventions or dissipating itself in
-chimerical projects; it may be a harmless crotchet or a vicious
-proclivity, philanthropic or misanthropic; it is, nevertheless, a bent or
-bias and so far a deviation from the norm of perfect intellectual
-rectitude.
-
-A madman, says Coleridge, is one who "mistakes his thoughts for person and
-things." But here the frenzies of the lunatic intrench on the functions of
-the poet, who "of imagination all compact," takes his fancies for
-realities,
-
- "Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
- A local habitation and a name."
-
-Coleridge's definition includes also the mythopoeic faculty, the power of
-projecting creations of the mind and endowing them with objective
-actuality and independent existence, which in the infancy of the race
-peopled heaven and earth with phantasms, and still croons over cradles and
-babbles of brownie and fairy in nurseries and chimney-corners. No progress
-of science can wholly eradicate this tendency to mythologize. In the
-absence of better material, it seizes upon the most prosaic and practical
-improvements in modern household life and clothes them with poetry and
-legend. The imaginative child of New York or Boston, after feeding the
-mind on fairy tales, converts the ordinary gas-pipe into the den of a
-dragon, which puts forth its fiery tongue when the knob is turned. The
-sleeping figure of a virgin carved in marble and copied from an ancient
-Greek sculpture of Ariadne, which reposes on an arch in the park of
-Sans-souci at Potsdam, has been transformed by the popular imagination
-into an enchanted princess, who will awake as soon as a horseman succeeds
-in springing over it three times with his steed. So vivid is the belief in
-this story that many good Christians never pass through the archway
-without making the sign of the cross as a prophylactic against possible
-demonic influences. The Suabian peasant still believes that the railroad
-is a device of the devil, who is entitled by contract to a tollage of one
-passenger on every train; he is in a constant state of anxiety lest his
-turn may come on the next trip and always wears a crucifix as the best
-means, so far as his own person is concerned, of cheating the devil of his
-due. As the Church has uniformly consigned great inventors to the infernal
-regions, his Satanic Majesty could have never had any lack of ingenious
-wits among his subjects capable of advising him in such matters.
-
-An important consideration, which did not disturb the minds of mediaeval
-jurists, nor stay the hand of strictly retributive justice, is the fact,
-now generally admitted, that crimes, like all other human actions, are
-subject to certain fixed laws, which seem to some extent to remove them
-from the province of free will and the power of individual determination.
-Professor Morselli has shown statistically that suicide, which we are wont
-to consider a wholly voluntary act, is really dependent upon a great
-variety of circumstances, over which man has no control: climate,
-seasons, months, days, state of crops, domestic, social, political,
-financial, economical, geographical and meteorological conditions, sun,
-moon, and stars all work together, impelling him to self-destruction or
-keeping him from it. Suicide increases when the earth is in aphelion, and
-decreases when it is in perihelion. Race and religion are also important
-factors in aggravating or mitigating the suicidal tendency, Germans and
-Protestants being most, and Semitic nations and Mohammedans, including
-those of Aryan and African blood, being least addicted to it. Suicide is,
-in fact, the resultant of a vast number of complicated and far-reaching
-forces, which we can neither trace nor measure, and of which the victims
-themselves are for the most part unconscious. To a very considerable
-degree, it is a question of environment in the broadest sense of the term;
-"an effect," says Morselli, "of the struggle for existence and of human
-selection, working according to the laws of evolution among civilized
-peoples." What is proved to be true of self-slaughter is equally so of
-murder and every other crime.
-
-An additional reflection, that "must give us pause" in the presence of
-crime, is that some of the chief causes operating to produce the manifold
-evils afflicting society and threatening to subvert it, are due in a great
-measure to the present egoistic organization of our social and industrial
-system, the selfish and unscrupulous power of wealth directed and
-stimulated by superior intelligence and energy, on the one hand, and the
-brute forces of ignorance driven to despair by the disheartening and
-debasing pressure of poverty, on the other hand, arrayed against each
-other in fierce and bitter conflict. Much of the individual viciousness,
-which society is required to punish, springs directly from the unjust and
-injurious conditions of life, which society itself has created. It is the
-perception of this fact that disturbs the conscience, puzzles the will,
-and palsies the arm of the modern law-giver and executor of justice.
-
-Mediaeval legislators were not restrained by any scruples of this sort;
-they regarded the criminal, both human and animal, as the sole author of
-the crime, ascribing it simply to his own wickedness and never looking
-beyond the mere actual deed to the social influences, psychical and
-physical characteristics and inherited qualities, that impelled him with
-irresistible force to do iniquitous things. This was doubtless a very
-narrow, superficial and utterly unphilosophical view of human action and
-responsibility; the danger now-a-days lies in the opposite extreme, in the
-tendency to pity the vicious individual as the passive product and
-commiserable victim of unfortunate conditions, and while engaged in the
-laudable attempt to improve these conditions by working out broad and
-benevolent plans of permanent relief and reformation for the future
-amelioration of society, to relax penalties and to fail in providing by
-sufficiently stringent measures for its present security. Tribunals have
-only to do with individual criminals as their conduct affects the general
-welfare. In what manner their characters have been formed by ancestral
-agencies and other predispositions may be an interesting study to the
-psychologist and the sociologist, but does not concern the judge or the
-jurist in the discharge of their official functions. The problem of crime
-is therefore a very simple one, so far as the criminal lawyer has to deal
-with the concrete case, but very complex, when we look beyond the overt
-act to its genesis in the life of the race. The proper administration of
-penal justice is weakened and defeated by mixing itself up with
-psycho-pathological inquiries wholly foreign to it.
-
-It is a curious coincidence that the theory of evolution, in its
-application to man's free agency, should arrive at essentially the same
-conclusion as the theology of Augustine and Calvin. Predestination, which
-the suffragan of Hippo and the Genevan divine attributed to the arbitrary
-decrees of God, evolution traces to the influences of heredity upon
-individuals, predetermining their bodily and mental constitutions. There
-is, however, a wide difference between these two doctrines in their
-workings. From the clutch of a deity "willing to show his wrath and to
-make his power known," no man can by any effort of his own effect his
-escape. Against this imperious and general sentence of damnation no
-process of development, no upward striving, no individual initiative can
-be of any avail. Evolution, on the contrary, promises a gradual release
-from low ancestral conditions--the original sin of the theologians--and
-opens up to the race a way of redemption, not only through natural
-selection and spontaneous variations resulting in higher and nobler types
-of mankind, but also through the modification of inherited traits by
-careful breeding, thorough discipline and the conscious and constant
-endeavour of every human being to improve and perfect himself. Salvation
-through the "election of grace" is by no means identical with salvation
-through the "survival of the fittest." The righteousness of those whom God
-has chosen as "the vessels of mercy whom he had afore prepared unto
-glory," may be and probably is "as filthy rags"; evolutionary science, on
-the contrary, recognizes and appreciates redeemable qualities by
-selecting, strengthening and propagating them and by this means aims
-ultimately to redeem the world. It imposes upon each man the duty and
-necessity of working out his own salvation, not with fear and trembling at
-the prospect of meeting an angry deity, but with hope and cheerfulness,
-knowing that the beneficent forces of nature are working in him, as in
-all forms of organic life, in obedience to the laws of development,
-towards the goal of his highest possible perfection by gradually
-eliminating the heirloom of the beast and the savage, and letting the
-instincts of the tiger and the ape slowly die within him. "The best man,"
-said Socrates, "is he who seeks most earnestly to perfect himself, and the
-happiest man is he who has the fullest consciousness that he is perfecting
-himself." This utterance of the Athenian sage expresses the fundamental
-principle of the ethics of evolution, according to which there can be no
-greater sin than the neglect of self-culture, holding, as it does, in the
-province of science a place corresponding in importance to that which the
-unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost holds in the province of theology.
-No one is blamable for inheriting bad tendencies; but every one is
-blamable for not striving to eradicate them. If evil impulses prove to be
-irresistible, then society must step in and render them harmless by
-depriving of life or liberty the unfortunate victims of such propensities.
-
-Again, if the mental and moral qualities of the lower animals differ from
-those of man, not in kind, but only in degree, and the human mammal is
-descended from a stock of primates, to which apes and bats belong, and
-dogs and cats and pigs are more remotely akin, it is difficult to
-determine the point at which moral and penal responsibility ceases in the
-descending, or begins in the ascending scale of being. That beasts and
-birds and even insects commit acts of violence, which in human agents
-would be called crimes, and which spring from the same psychical causes
-and, as we have shown in another work (_Evolutionary Ethics and Animal
-Psychology._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.; London: William Heinemann,
-1898), are punished by the herd, the flock or the swarm in a more or less
-judicial manner, is undeniable. The zooepsychologist Lacassagne divides the
-criminal offences of animals into six classes or categories, the ground of
-the classification being the motives which underlie and originate them.
-The lowest or most rudimentary motive to crime in both man and beast is
-hunger, the operation of which is seen in the spectacle of one savage
-killing another in order to get sole possession of a wild beast slain by
-them in common, and in the ferocity of two dogs fighting over a bone.
-Perhaps the great majority of crimes afflicting society at the present
-time have their origin in this source. Next to the desire of the
-individual to preserve himself comes the desire to preserve his kind; this
-motive is commonly considered a more generous impulse and is praised as
-parental affection. This earliest and most primitive of altruistic
-emotions is exceedingly strong in the lower animals, especially in those
-whose offspring are comparatively helpless in infancy, as is the case
-with all species of monkeys, and manifests itself not only in tender care
-of the young, but also in theft, robbery, and other acts of violence
-committed for their sake. The wanton love of destruction characterizes
-both beasts and men; there are roughs and vandals among the former as well
-as among the latter, who take a malicious delight in doing injury to
-persons and property. Vanity and the desire of "showing off" play no small
-part in the wrongdoings of apes and apish men and women. Other incentives
-to crime are ambition, sexual passion, gregariousness, the concentrated
-egoism and merciless brutality of a crowd even in the most civilized
-communities, the outrages so recklessly perpetrated by what a French
-jurist, M. Tarde, calls "that impulsive and maniac beast, the mob." It may
-be remarked, too, that the kinds of criminal actions, which civilization
-tends to diminish among men, domestication tends to diminish among the
-lower animals.
-
-If these statements be correct, why should not animals be held penally
-responsible for their conduct as well as human beings? There are men
-apparently less intelligent than apes. Why then should the man be
-capitally punished and the ape not brought to trial? And if the ape be
-made responsible and punishable, why not the dog, the horse, the pig, and
-the cat? In other words, does evolutionary criminology justify the
-judicial proceedings instituted by mediaeval courts against animals or
-regard the typical human criminal as having in this respect no supremacy
-over the beast? Does modern science take us back to the barbarities of the
-Middle Ages in matters of penal legislation, and in abolishing judicial
-procedure against quadrupedal beasts is it thereby logically forced to
-stay the hand of justice uplifted against bipedal brutes? The answer to
-these questions is unhesitatingly negative. Zooepsychology is the key to
-anthropopsychology and enables us to get a clearer conception of the
-genesis of human crime by studying its manifestations in the lower
-creation; we thus see it in the process of becoming, acquire a more
-correct appreciation of its nature and origin and learn how to deal with
-it more rationally and effectively in bestial man.
-
-Another point discussed by Plato and still seriously debated by writers on
-criminal jurisprudence is whether punishment is to be inflicted _quia
-peccatum est_ or _ne peccetur_; in other words, whether the object of it
-should be retributive or preventive. The truth is, however, that both of
-these motives are operative and as determining causes are so closely
-intermixed that it is impossible to separate them. As the distinguished
-criminalist, Professor Von Liszt, has remarked one might as well ask
-whether a sick man takes medicine because he is ill or in order to get
-well. The penalty is imposed in consequence of the commission of a crime
-and also for the purpose of preventing a recurrence of it, and is
-therefore both retributory and reformatory. Punishment is defined by Laas
-as "ethicized and nationalized revenge, exercised by the state or body
-politic, which is alone impartial enough to pronounce just judgments and
-powerful enough to execute them." Civilization takes vengeance out of the
-hands of the injured individual and delegates it to the community or
-commonwealth, which has been outraged in his person. The underlying
-principle, however, is, in both cases, the same, and the idea of justice,
-as administered by the community, does not rise above that entertained by
-the aggregate or average of individuals composing it.
-
-The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of the
-laws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in the
-psychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive and
-peremptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is so
-greatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it is
-difficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by these
-speculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penal
-application of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in any
-given case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
-
- "the native hue of resolution
- Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
-
-If it be true, as Mr. Galton affirms, that legal ability is transmitted
-from father to son, criminal proclivity may be equally hereditary, and the
-judge and the culprit may have reached their relative positions through a
-line of ancestral influences, working according to immutable and
-inevasible laws of descent.
-
-Schopenhauer maintained the theory of "responsibility for character," and
-not for actions, which are simply the outgrowth and expression of
-character. The same act may be good or bad according to the motives from
-which it springs. This distinction is constantly made both in ethics and
-in jurisprudence, and determines our moral judgments and judicial
-decisions. Yet the chief elements, which enter into a person's character
-and contribute to its formation, lie beyond his control or even his
-consciousness, and in many cases have done their work before his birth.
-Responsibility for character is equivalent to responsibility for all the
-inherited tendencies and prenatal influences, of which character is the
-resultant, and leads at last to the theological dogma of the imputation of
-sin all the way back to Adam as the federal head of the race, a doctrine
-which Schopenhauer would be the first to repudiate. Besides, evil
-propensities and criminal designs are recognizable and punishable only
-when embodied in overt acts. The law cannot deprive a man of life or
-liberty because he is known to be vicious and depraved, although the
-police in the exercise of its protective and preventive functions and as a
-means of providing for the general security, may feel in duty bound to
-keep a watchful eye on him and to make an occasional raid on the dens and
-"dives" haunted by him and his kind. There are also instances on record,
-in which it is impossible to trace the culpable act to any marked
-corruption of character.
-
-A rather remarkable illustration of this fact is furnished by the trial of
-Marie Jeanneret, which took place at Geneva in Switzerland in 1868 and
-which deservedly ranks high among the _causes celebres_ of the present
-century, both as a legal question and a problem of psycho-pathology. [At
-the time when this trial occurred, the writer directed attention to the
-peculiar and perplexing features of the case in _The Nation_ for January
-7, 1869, p. 11.] Dumas in his novel _Le Comte de Monte Christo_, describes
-the character and career of a young, refined and beautiful woman, moving
-in the best circles of Parisian society, and yet poisoning successively
-six or seven members of her own family; but even the most imaginative and
-audacious of French romancers did not dare to delineate such criminality
-without ascribing it to some apparently adequate motive. Madame de
-Villefort administered deadly potions to her relatives under the impulse
-of a morbidly intense maternal love, which centred all her moral and
-intellectual faculties on the idea of making her son the sole heir to a
-large estate. Affection and social ambition for her offspring incited her
-to the murder of her kin. But the invention, which created such a monster
-of sentimental depravity, has been far surpassed in real life by the
-exploits of Marie Jeanneret, a Swiss nurse, who took advantage of her
-professional position to give doses of poison to the sick persons confided
-to her care, from the effects of which seven of them died.
-
-In the commission of this monotonous series of diabolical crimes, the
-culprit does not seem to have been animated either by animosity or
-cupidity. On the contrary, she always showed the warmest affection for her
-victims, and nursed them with the tenderest care and the most untiring
-devotion, as she watched the distressful workings of the fatal draught;
-nor did she derive the slightest material benefit from her course of
-conduct, but rather suffered considerable pecuniary loss by the death of
-her patients. The testimony of physicians and alienists furnished no
-evidence of insanity, nor did she show any signs of atavistic reversion,
-physiological abnormity or hereditary homicidal bent. Monomaniacs usually
-act fitfully and impulsively; but Marie Jeanneret always manifested the
-coolest premeditation and self-possession, never exhibiting the least
-hesitation or confusion, or the faintest trace of hallucination, but
-answered with the greatest clearness and calmness every question put by
-the president of the court. Even M. Turrettini, the prosecuting attorney,
-in presenting the case to the jury, was unable to discover any rational
-principle on which to explain the conduct and urge the conviction of the
-accused; and after exhausting the common category of hypotheses and
-showing the inadequacy of each, he was driven by sheer stress of
-inexplicability to seek a motive in "_l'espece de volupte qu'elle
-eprouverait a commettre un crime_," or what, in less elegant, but more
-vigorous Western vernacular, would be called "pure cussedness." Not only
-was such an explanation merely a circumlocutory confession of ignorance,
-but it was wholly inconsistent with the general character of the indictee.
-
-Indeed, the persistent and pitiless perpetration of this one sort of crime
-by this woman, under circumstances which should have excited compassion in
-the hardest human heart, seems more like the working of some baneful and
-irrepressible force in nature, or the relentless operation of a
-destructive machine, than like the voluntary action of a free and
-responsible moral agent. M. Zurlinden, the counsel for the defendant,
-dwelt with emphasis upon this mysterious phase of the case and thus saved
-his client from the scaffold. The jury, after five hours' deliberation,
-rendered a verdict of "Guilty, with extenuating circumstances," as the
-result of which the accused was sentenced to twenty years' hard labour.
-As a matter of fact, there were no circumstances of an extenuating
-character except the utter inability of the jurors to discover any motive
-for the commission of such a succession of cold-blooded atrocities.
-
-After fifteen years' imprisonment the convict died. During this whole
-period of incarceration she not only showed great intelligence and strict
-integrity, but was also remarkably kind and helpful to all with whom she
-came in contact. She instructed her fellow-convicts in needle-work and
-fine embroidery, loved to attend them in sickness, and by her general
-influence raised very perceptibly the tone of morals in the workhouse. If
-it be true, as asserted by Mynheer Heymanns, one of the latest expounders
-of Schopenhauer's ethics, that "a man is responsible for his actions only
-so far as his character finds expression in them, and is to be judged
-solely by his character," what shall be done in cases like the
-afore-mentioned, in which the criminal conduct is exceptional, and so far
-from being symptomatic of the general character stands out as an isolated
-and ugly excrescence and appalling abnormity? According to this theory
-crime is to be punished only when it is the natural outgrowth and
-legitimate fruit of the criminal's individuality and society is to be left
-unprotected against all maleficence not traceable to such an origin.
-
-There can be hardly any doubt that the Swiss nurse was a toxicomaniac and
-that she had become infatuated with poisons, partly by watching their
-effects on her own system, and partly by reading about their properties in
-medical and botanical works, to the study of which she was passionately
-devoted. Did not Mithridates, if we may believe the statements of Galen,
-experiment with poisons on living persons? Why should she not follow such
-an illustrious example, especially as she never hesitated to take herself
-the potions she administered to others; the only difference being that
-habit had made her, like the famous King of Pontus, proof against their
-venom. She often attempted analyses of these substances, and in one
-instance was severely burned by the bursting of a crucible, in which she
-was endeavouring to obtain atropine from atropa belladonna or deadly
-nightshade. It was this terrible poison, which is endowed with exceedingly
-energetic qualities and is therefore used by physicians with extreme
-precaution, that seems to have had an irresistible fascination for her,
-growing into an insane desire to discover and test its occult virtues. She
-had read and heard of zealous scientists and illustrious physicians, who
-had experimented on themselves and on their disciples, and become the
-benefactors of mankind; why then should she not adopt the same method in
-the pursuit of truth and use for this purpose the physiological material
-which her profession placed in her hands?
-
-However preposterous such reasoning on her part may appear to us and
-however vaguely and subconsciously the mental process may have been
-carried on, it offers the only theory adequate to explain all the facts
-and to account for the almost incredible union of contradictory traits in
-her character. The enthusiasm of the experimenter overbore in her the
-native sympathy of the woman. She observed the writhings of her poisoned
-victims with as "much delight" as Professor Mantegazza confesses he felt
-in studying the physiology of pain in the dumb animals "shrieking and
-groaning" on his tormentatore. "The physiologist," says Claude Bernard,
-"is no ordinary man. He is a savant, seized and possessed by a scientific
-idea. He does not hear the cries of suffering wrung from racked and
-lacerated creatures, nor see the blood which flows. He has nothing before
-his eyes but his idea and the organisms, which are hiding the secrets he
-means to discover." Marie Jeanneret was a fanatic of this kind. She, too,
-was a woman possessed with ideas as witches were once supposed to be
-possessed with devils. Had she prudently confined her experiments to the
-torture of helpless animals, she might perhaps have taken rank in the
-scientific world with Brachet, Magendie and other celebrated vivisectors,
-and been admitted with honour to the Academy, instead of being thrust
-ignominiously into a penitentiary.
-
-The assertion as regards any supposed case of madness, that "there's
-method in it," is popularly assumed to be equivalent to a denial of the
-existence of the madness altogether. But psycho-pathology affords no
-warrant for such an assumption. An individual, who commits murder under
-the impulse of morbid jealousy, pecuniary distress, social rancour,
-political or scientific fanaticism, or any other form of monomania, is not
-the less the victim of a mind diseased because he shows rational
-forethought in planning and executing the deed. His mental faculties may
-be perfectly healthy and normal in their operation up to the point of
-derangement, from which the fatal act proceeds. No chain is stronger than
-its weakest link; and this is equally true of physical and psychical
-concatenations. Under such circumstances the sane powers of the mind are
-all at the mercy of the one fault and are made to minister to this single
-infirmity.
-
-According to English law a man is irresponsibly insane, when he has "such
-defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and
-quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not
-know he was doing what was wrong." This definition is very incomplete and
-covers only the most obvious forms of insanity; perhaps in the great
-majority of cases there is no "defect of reason" nor "disease of mind" in
-the proper sense of these terms, but only a disturbance of the emotions or
-perversion of the will originating in physical disorder. Besides, it is
-undeniable that animal intelligence is capable of distinguishing between
-right and wrong and of comprehending what is punishable and what is not
-punishable. In general when a dog does wrong, he knows that he is doing
-wrong; and a monkey often takes delight in doing what is wrong simply
-because he knows it is wrong. If a monkey gets angry and kills a child, he
-obeys the same vicious propensity that impels a brutal man to commit
-murder. There is no greater "defect of reason" in one case than in the
-other. Why then should the monkey be summarily shot or knocked on the
-head, and the man arrested, tried, convicted and hanged by the constituted
-authorities? Simply because such a public prosecution and execution would
-not exert any influence whatever in preventing infanticide on the part of
-other monkeys; if it could be shown that a formal trial of the monkey
-would produce this salutary effect, then it certainly ought not to be
-omitted. The recent attempt to modify the English law so as to render all
-"certifiably insane" persons irresponsible for their actions, would result
-in the abolition of all punishment for crime, since many physicians regard
-every criminal as insane and would not hesitate to certify their opinion
-to the proper tribunal.
-
-It is no easy task now-a-days for penal legislation to keep pace with
-psychiatral investigation and to adjust itself to the wide range and nice
-distinctions of modern psycho-pathology; nor is it necessary to do so.
-_Salus socialis suprema lex esto._ Society is bound to protect itself
-against every criminal assault, no matter what its source or character may
-be. This is the ultimate object not only of the prison and the scaffold,
-but also of all reformatories for juvenile offenders and vagabonds, who by
-judicious correction and instruction may perhaps be brought to amend their
-ways and thus be prevented from becoming a social danger by swelling the
-disorderly ranks of the permanently criminal classes. If a person proves
-to be unamenable to moral or penitential measures and remains an
-incorrigible transgressor, it is the duty of the community to set him
-aside by death or by life-long durance. Penal legislation does not aim
-primarily at the betterment of the individual; laws are enacted not for
-the purpose of making men good and noble, but solely for the purpose of
-rendering them safe members of society. This is effected by depriving the
-irremediably vicious of their liberty and, if necessary, also of their
-life.
-
-The pardoning power, too, must be exercised with the utmost reserve and
-circumspection. The state does not look upon public offences as sins but
-as crimes. The introduction of the theological conception of delinquencies
-into the province of civil government has always been the vice of
-hierarchies and has never failed to work immense mischief by leading
-inevitably to impertinent intermeddling with matters of conscience and
-private opinion, putting a premium on pretended repentance and like
-hypocrisies, and converting the witness-box into a confessional and the
-court of justice into a court of inquisition. This has been uniformly the
-result wherever a body of priests has become a body of rulers, endowed
-with sovereignty in the administration of secular affairs.
-
-If it could be conclusively proved or even rendered highly probable, that
-the capital punishment of an ox, which had gored a man to death, deterred
-other oxen from pushing with their horns, it would be the unquestionable
-right and imperative duty of our legislatures and tribunals to re-enact
-and execute the old Mosaic law on this subject. In like manner, if it can
-be satisfactorily shown that the hanging of an admittedly insane person,
-who has committed murder, prevents other insane persons from perpetrating
-the same crime, or tends to diminish the number of those who go insane in
-the same direction, it is clearly the duty of society to hang such
-persons, whatever may be the opinion of the alienist concerning their
-moral responsibility. Nor is this merely a hypothetical case or purely
-academical question. It is a well-established fact, that the partially
-insane, especially those affected with "moral insanity" or so-called
-"cranks," have their intelligence intact, and are capable of exercising
-their reasoning powers freely and fully in laying their plans and in
-carrying out their designs. Indeed, criminals of this class are sometimes
-known to have entertained the thought that they would be acquitted on the
-ground of insanity, and have thereby been emboldened to do the deed; and
-it is by no means impossible, but highly probable, that a belief in the
-certainty of punishment would have acted as an effective deterrent. A case
-of this kind occurred in 1894 in England, where an inmate of a lunatic
-asylum deliberately murdered a lawyer, who was visiting the institution.
-The murderer declared that he had no grudge against his victim, but
-believed himself to be persecuted in general and wished to call attention
-to his wrongs by assassinating some official or prominent person. His
-method of redress was that of the ordinary anarchist; and his confession
-that he would not have dared to commit the act unless he had believed that
-as a certificated lunatic under confinement he ran no risk of being
-hanged, illustrates the point in question. There can be no doubt, for
-example, that the execution of Guiteau for the assassination of Garfield
-has greatly lessened the dangers of this kind to which the President of
-the United States is exposed; just as the swift and severe punishment of
-the Chicago anarchists has dampened the zeal and restrained the activity
-of the fanatics, who labour under the delusion that, in a free country,
-dynamite bombs are the fittest means of disseminating reformatory ideas
-and bringing about the social and political regeneration of the world.
-
-From this point of view it is hardly necessary to remark upon the
-absurdity of Lombroso's assertion that the jurists, who formerly condemned
-and punished animals, were more logical and consistent than those who now
-pass sentence of death on cretins like Grandi or cranks (_grafomani
-matteschi_) like Passannante and Guiteau (_Archivio di Psichiatria._
-Torino, 1881, Vol. II. Fasc. IV.), since he utterly ignores the preventive
-character and purpose of judicial punishment and its practical utility in
-checking the homicidal propensities of such persons, whereas the criminal
-prosecution and capital punishment of a pig for infanticide will not have
-the slightest effect in preventing other pigs from mangling and devouring
-little children.
-
-That animals might be deterred from doing violence to men by putting one
-of their kind to death and suspending its body as a scarecrow is
-maintained by a distinguished writer in the first half of the sixteenth
-century, Hierolymus Rosarius, the nuntius of Pope Clement VII. to the
-court of Ferdinand I., then King of Hungary, who states that in Africa
-crucified lions are placed near towns, and that other lions, however
-hungry they may be, are kept away through fear of the same punishment:
-_cujus poenae metu, licet urgeat fames, desinunt_. He records also that in
-riding from Cologne towards Dueren, he and his companions saw in the vast
-forest two wolves in brogans hanging on a gallows, just like two thieves,
-as a warning to the rest of the pack: "Et nos ab Agrippina Colonia Duram
-versus equitantes in illa vasta silva, vidimus duos caligatos lupos non
-secus quam duos latrones, furcae suspensos; _quo similis poenae formidine a
-maleficio reliqui deterreantur_." In like manner the American farmer sets
-up a dead hawk as a deterrent for the protection of his hens. We may add
-that Rosarius entertained a high opinion of the intelligence and moral
-character of animals and wrote a book to prove their frequent superiority
-to men in the use of their rational faculties. This very clever and
-original work entitled: _Quod animalia bruta saepe ratione utantur melius
-homine_, was first published by Gabriel Naude at Paris in 1648; an
-enlarged edition was issued by Ribow at Helmstedt in 1728, with a
-dissertation on the soul in animals.
-
-In the class of ill-poised minds, yclept cranks, just mentioned, the
-spirit of imitation is peculiarly strong and morbidly contagious. The
-celebrated psychiater, Baron Von Feuchtersleben, in his treatise _On the
-Diatetics of the Soul_, cites the case of a French soldier, who shot
-himself in a sentry-box; soon afterwards, several other soldiers took
-their lives in the same manner and in the same place. Napoleon I. ordered
-the sentry-box to be burned and thus put an end to the suicides. A similar
-instance is recorded by Max Simon in his _Hygiene de l'esprit_, in which
-he states that a workman hanged himself in the embrasure of a gate, and
-his example was followed directly by a dozen of his fellows, so that it
-was found necessary to wall up the gate in order to stop this strange
-epidemic. The same effect is produced by popular romances, in which the
-hero or heroine or both together dispose of themselves in this way;
-sometimes whole communities are thus infected by a single work of fiction;
-perhaps the most notable case of this kind in modern literature is the era
-of sentimentalism and suicidism which followed the publication of Goethe's
-_Werther_. It is well known, too, that another class of sensational
-novels, the plots of which consist in the development of criminal
-intrigues, tend to promote crime by rendering it fascinating and
-indicating an attractive and exciting method of perpetrating it. We have a
-recent and very striking instance of this kind in the origin and evolution
-of the notorious Dreyfus affair. In June 1893, a year and a half before
-the arrest of Dreyfus, a novel entitled _Les Deux Freres_, by Louis
-Letang, appeared in the Paris _Petit Journal_, the plot of which may be
-concisely described as follows. A young and capable officer, Captain
-Philippe Dormelles, who holds a position of confidence in the French
-department of war, is envied and hated by two colleagues named Aurelien
-and Daniel. Their enmity and jealousy finally become so intense that they
-conspire to effect his ruin by accusing him of selling to a foreign power
-the secrets of the national defence. It is arranged that a compromising
-letter imitating the handwriting of Dormelles and addressed to a foreign
-military _attache_ shall be placed in the secret archives, where it will
-fall into the hands of the head of the department Lieutenant-Colonel
-Alleward. Dormelles is arrested and thrown into the prison Cherche-Midi,
-and at the same time Daniel causes a violent article to be inserted in a
-newspaper _Le Vigilant_, charging him with high treason, and seeking to
-excite public opinion against him. This article concludes with the false
-statement that a search in Dormelles' department had led to the discovery
-of important documents referring to the fabrication of smokeless powder,
-and that thereupon Dormelles had confessed his guilt. He is then sentenced
-to the galleys, but his betrothed is convinced of his innocence and
-finally succeeds in detecting and exposing the forgeries.
-Lieutenant-Colonel Alleward is arrested and commits suicide in prison,
-not with a razor like Henry, but with a revolver. One scene in the novel
-describes the appearance of a veiled lady on the very spot near the Champs
-Elysees, where the mysterious veiled lady is said to have appeared to
-Esterhazy three years later and for much the same purpose. The French
-minister of war, Mercier, was forced to proceed against Dreyfus by the
-_Libre Patrole_, which published lies about his confession, as _Le
-Vigilant_ did about Dormelles. The only rational explanation of this
-remarkable concurrence of events, as they are narrated in the fiction and
-afterwards occurred in fact, is that the method of conducting the
-conspiracy against Dreyfus and the possibility of accomplishing it were
-suggested by Letang's story, although the conspirators doubtless did not
-anticipate that the logic of events would render the results of their
-falsehoods and forgeries as fatal to them as they were to their prototypes
-in the novel. Every scoundrel is firmly convinced that he can pattern
-after his precursors in villainy, avoid their mistakes and commit the same
-crime without incurring the same penalty.
-
-That paroxysms of epilepsy, hysterics and various forms of frenzy are
-contagious and may be easily communicated to nervous persons, who witness
-them, has been clearly proved. Vicious passions obey the same law of
-imitation even in a still higher degree than tender emotions and nervous
-diseases, and more than two centuries ago the illustrious jurisconsult,
-Samuel Pufendorf, laid down the general principle that he who for the
-first time commits a crime liable to spread by contagion and to become
-virulent, should be punished with extreme severity, in order that it may
-not infect others and create a moral pestilence.
-
-The hemp cure is always a harsh cure, especially where there is any doubt
-as to the offender's mental soundness; but in view of the increasing
-frequency with which atrocious and wilful crime shelters itself under the
-plea of insanity and becomes an object of misdirected sympathy to maudlin
-sentimentalists, the adoption of radical and rigorous measures in the
-infliction of punishment were perhaps an experiment well worth trying.
-Meanwhile, let the psychiater continue his researches, and after we have
-passed through the present confused and perilous period of transition from
-gross and brutal mediaeval conceptions of justice to refined and
-humanitarian modern conceptions of justice, we may, in due time, succeed
-in establishing our penal code and criminal procedure upon foundations
-that shall be both philosophically sound and practically safe.
-
-
-
-
-APPENDIX
-
-CONTAINING ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS
-
-
-A
-
-TESTIMONIALES ET REASSUMPTUM
-
-Anno domini millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo et die decima
-tertia mensis aprilis comparuit in bancho actorum judicialium episcopatus
-Maurianne honestus vir Franciscus Ameneti scindicus et procurator
-procuratorioque nomine totius communitatis et parrochie Sancti Julliani
-qui in causa quam pretendunt reassumere prosequi aut de novo intentare
-coram reverendissimo domino Maurianne episcopo et principe seu reverendo
-domino generali ejus Vicario et Officiali contra Animalia ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
-Amblevins facit constituit elegit et creavit certum ac legitimum
-procuratorem totius dicte communitatis et substituit vigore sui
-scindicatus de quo fidem faciet egregium Petremandum Bertrandi causidicum
-in curiis civitatis Maurianne presentem et acceptantem ad fines coram
-eodem reverendissimo Episcopo et ejus Vicario generali comparendi et
-faciendi quicquid circa negotiis ejusdem cause spectat et pertinet et
-prout ipse scindicus facere posset si presens et personaliter interesset
-cum electione domicillii et ceteris clausulis relevationis ratihabitionis
-et aliis opportunis suo juramento firmatis subque obligatione et hypotheca
-bonorum suorum et dicte communitatis que conceduntur in bancho die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO
-
-Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabatti
-decima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali
-Maurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cum
-egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimoniales
-constitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilis
-proxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectam
-parte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente _Divino
-primitus implorato auxilio_ signatum _Franciscus Faeti_ contra Animalia
-bruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiam
-acta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime de
-anno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostra
-lata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contra
-Animalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri de
-advocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possent
-dictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nos
-assignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contra
-que agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregium
-Anthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderato
-attenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur et
-debeat ipsa Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne de
-consilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabili
-domino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (_sic_) cui similiter injungimus ut debeat
-eorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationem
-mandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulteriora
-providebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fieri
-certas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratas
-quas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter non
-adempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsas
-devotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quo
-partes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout juris
-fuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimus
-curato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in prono
-ecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illas
-adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsis
-attestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-Maurianne die anno permissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die trigesima mensis maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato honestus Franciscus Ameneti
-conscindicus jurat venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus
-procuratore producit et reproducit supplicationem nobis porrectam
-retroacta et agitata contra eadem Animalia maxime designata in memoriali
-coram nobis tento decima sexta maii literas eodem die curato Sancti
-Julliani directas unacum attestatione signata _Romaneti_ qua constat
-clerum et incolas dicti loci proposse satisfecisse contentis in eisdem
-literis ad formam ordinis in ipsis designato petit sibi juxta et in actis
-antea requisita provideri et alia uberius juxta cause merita et inthimari
-egregio Fillioli procuratori ex adverso. Hinc egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium brutorum petit communicationem omnium et singularum
-productionum ex adverso cum termino deliberandi defendendi et participandi
-cum domino advocato premisso. Indi et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne
-prefatus communicatione superius petita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabatti proximi sexta instantis mensis junii ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparandum et tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli
-nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare et defendere deliberandum et
-defendendum. Datum in civitate Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-R. D. GENERALI VICARIO ET OFFICIALI EPISCOPATUS MAURIANAE
-
-Divino primitus implorato auxilio humiliter exponunt syndici totius
-communitatis seu parrochie Sancti Julliani caeterique homines ac sua
-interesse putantes et infrascriptis adherere cupientes quod cum alias ob
-forte peccata et caetera commissa tanta multitudo bruti animalis generis
-convoluntium vulgo tamen vocabulo Amblevini seu Verpillion dicti per
-vineas et vinetum ipsius parrochie accessisset damna quamplurima ibi
-perpetrantis folia et pampinos rodendo et vastando ut ex eis nulli saltem
-pauci fructus percipi poterant qui juri cultorum satisffacere possint et
-quod magis et gravius erat illa macula ad futura tempora trahendo vestigia
-nulli palmites fructus afferentes produci poterant illi autem flagitio
-antecessores amputare viam credentes prout divina prudentia erat credendum
-porrectis precibus adversus eadem Animalia et in eorum defensoris
-constituti personam debitis sumptis informationibus ac aliis
-formalitatibus necessariis prestitis sententia seu ordinatio prolata
-comperitur cujus et divinae potentiae virtute praecibus tamen et officiis
-divinis mediantibus illud flagitium et inordinatus furor prefatorum
-brutorum Animalium cessarunt usque ad duos vel circa citra annos quod
-veluti priscis temporibus rediere in eisdem vineis et vineto et damna
-inextimabilia et incomprehensibilia afferre ceperunt ita ut pluribus
-partibus nulli fructus sperantur percipi possetque in dies deterius
-evenire culpa forte hominum minus orationibus et cultui divino vacantium
-seu vota et debita non vere et integre reddentium que tamen omnia divinae
-cognitioni consistit et remittenda veniunt eo quod Dei arcana cor hominis
-comprehendere nequit.
-
-Nihilominus cum certum sit gratiarum dona diversis diversimode fore
-collata hominibus et potissimum ecclesiastico ordini ut in nomine Jesu et
-virtute ejus sanctissime passionis possit in terris ligare solvere et
-flectere iterum ad R. V. recurrentes prius agitata reassumendo et quatenus
-opus fuerit de novo procedendo petunt in primis procuratorem aut
-defensorem ipsis Animalibus constitui ob defectum praecedentis vita functi
-quo facto et ut de expositis legitime constet debeatis inquisitiones et
-visitationes locorum fieri per nos aut alium idoneum commissarium
-caeterasque formalitates ad haec opportunas et requisitas exerceri ipso
-defensore legitime vocato et audito nec non aliter prout magis equum
-visum et compertum de jure extiterit procedere dignetur ad expulsionem
-dictorum Animalium via interdicti sive excommunicationis et alia debita
-censura ecclesiastica et justa ipsius sanctas constitutiones ad quas et
-divinae clementiae et mandatis suorum ministrorum se parituros offerunt et
-submittunt omni superstitione semota quod si stricta excommunicatione
-processum fuerit sunt parati dare et prestare locum ad pabulum et escam
-recipiendos ipsis Animalibus quemquidem locum exnunc relaxant et declarant
-prout infra et alias jus et justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo
-implorato benigno officio.
-
- FRAN. FAETI
-
-Ego subsignatus curatus Sancti Julliani attestor quomodo sacro die
-Penthecostes decima septima mensis maij anno domini millesimo
-quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo ego accepi de manibus sindicorum
-mandatum exortativum sive ordinationem R{di} generalis Vicarii et
-Officialis curie diocesis Maurianne datum in civitate Sancti Johannis
-decima sexta mensis may anno quo supra quod cum honore et reverentia juxta
-tenorem illius die lune Penthecostes decima octava may in offertorio magne
-misse parochialis populo ad divina audienda congregato publicavi idem
-populum michi commissum ad contritionem suorum peccaminum et ad devotionem
-juxta meum posse et serie monui processiones missas obsecrationes et
-orationes in predicto mandato contentas per tres dies continuos videlicet
-vicesima vicesima prima vicesima secunda predicti mensis cum ceteris
-presbiteris feci in quibus processionibus scindici cum parrochianis
-utriusque sexus per majorem partem circuitus vinearum interfuerunt
-deprecantes Dei omnipotentis clementia pro extirpatione brutorum Animalium
-predictas vineas atque alios fructus terre devastantium vulgariter
-nuncupatas (sic) Verpilions seu Amblavins in predicto mandato mentionata
-sive nominata in quorum fidem ad requisitionem dictorum scindicorum qui
-hanc attestationem petierunt quam illis in exonus mei tradidi hac die
-vicesima quarta may anno quo supra.
-
- ROMANET
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Canonicus et Cantor ecclesie cathedralis Sancti
-Johannis Maurianne in ... et temporalibus episcopatus Maurianne generalis
-Vicarius et Officialis dilecto sive vicario Sancti Julliani s ... in
-domino. Insequendo ordinationem per nos hodie date presentium latam in
-causa scindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium contra Animalia bruta ad formam
-muscarum volantia coloris viridis nuncupata Verpillions supplicata per
-quam inter cetera contenta in eadem dictum et ordinatum extitit devotiones
-et processiones fieri ordinatas per ordinationem latam ab antecessore
-nostro die octava maii anni millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi sexti in
-eadem causa in primis et ante omnia esse fiendas per instantes et
-habitatores dicti loci Sancti Julliani. Igitur vobis mandamus et
-injungimus quathenus die dominico Penthecostes in prono vestra ecclesie
-parrochialis contenta in dicta ordinatione declarare habeatis populumque
-monere et extortari ut illa adimpleant infra terminum tam breve quod fieri
-poterit et de ipsis attestationem nobis transmittere. Tenor vero dicte
-ordinationis continentis devotiones sequitur et est talis.
-
-Quia licet per testes de nostri mandato et commissarium per nos deputatum
-examinatos apparet Animalia bruta contra que in hujusmodi causa parte
-prefatorum supplicantium fuit supplicatum intulisse plura dampna
-insupportabilia ipsis supplicantibus que tamen dampna potius possunt
-attribuenda peccatis supplicantium decimis Deo omnipotenti de jure
-primitivo et ejus ministris non servientium et ipsum summum Deum
-diversimode eorum peccatis non (_sic_) offendentium quibus causis
-causantibus dampna fieri supplicantibus predictis non ut fame et egestate
-moriantur sed magis ut convertantur et eorum peccata deffluant ut tandem
-abundantiam bonorum temporalium consequantur pro substentatione eorum vite
-vivere et post hanc vitam humanam salutem eternam habeant. Cum a principio
-ipse summus Deus qui cuncta creavit fructus terre et anime vegetative
-produci permiserit tam substentatione vite hominum rationabilium et
-volatilium super terram viventium quamobrem non sic repente procedendum
-est contra prefata Animalia sic ut supra damnificantia ad fulminationem
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum Sancta Sede Apostolica inconsulta sive ab
-eadem ad id potestatem habentibus superioribus nostris sed potius
-recurrendum ad misericordiam Dei nostri qui in quacumque hora ingenuerit
-peccata propitius est ad misericordiam. Ipsi quamobrem causis premissis et
-alliis a jure resultantibus pronunciamus et declaramus inprimis fore et
-esse monendos et quos tenore presentium monemus et moneri mandamus ut ad
-ipsum Dominum nostrum ex toto et puro corde convertantur cum debita
-contrictione de peccatis commissis et proposito confitendi temporibus et
-loco opportunis et ab eisdem de futuro abstinendi et de cetero debite
-persolvendum Deo decimas de jure debitas et ejus ministris quibus de jure
-sunt persolvende eidem Domino Deo nostro per meritata sue sacratissime
-passionis et intercessione Beate Marie Virginis et omnium Sanctorum ejus
-humiliter exposcendo veniam et quibuscumque peccatis delictis et offensis
-contra ejus majestatem divinam factis ut tandem ab afflictionibus
-prefatorum Animalium liberare dignetur et ipsa Animalia loca non it ...
-ipsis supplicantibus ceterisque christianis transferre et al ... secundem
-ejus voluntatem et aliter exting ......... ..... eisdem supplicantibus uno
-die dominico in offertorio ......... ut ipso die dominico ......
-supplicantibus ...... ......... per circuitum vinearum ejusdem parrochie
-...... et per loca cum aspersione aque benedicte pro effugandis prefatis
-Animalibus tribus diebus immediate sequentibus significationem et
-notificationem sic ut supra fiendas quibus processionibus durantibus
-decantari et celebrari mandamus tres missas altas ante sive post quamlibet
-earum processionum ad devot ... cleri et populi quarum prima primo die
-decantabitur de Sancto Spiritu cum orationibus de Beata Maria. ... _Deus
-Deus qui contritorum_ et _A cunctis nos quesumus Domine mentis et
-corporis_ etc. et una pro defunctis secundo die decantatis de Beata Maria
-Virgine cum orationibus Sancti Spiritus Beate Marie Virginis illis _Qui
-contritorum_ et pro deffunctis. In eisdem processionibus supra fiendis
-jubemus in eadem ecclesia genibus flexis dici et decantari integriter
-_Veni Creator Spiritus_ quo hymno sic finito et dicto verceleto _Emitte
-Spiritum tuum et creabuntur_ etc. cum orationibus _Deus qui corda
-fidelium_ singulis diebus sic prout supra fiat proces ... decantando
-septem psalmos penitentiales cum letaniis suffragii et orationibus inde
-sequentibus mandamus moneri supplicantes prout supra ut in eisdem missis
-processionibus et devotionibus sic ut supra fiendis ad minus d ... de
-qualibet domo devote intersint dicendo eorum Fidem catholicam et alias
-devotiones et orationes ...... cum fuerit humiliter et devote preces et
-effundendo Domino Deo nostro ut per merita sue sanctissime passionis et
-intercessionem Beatissime Virginis Marie et omnium Sanctorum dignetur
-expellere ipsa Animalia predicta a prefatis vineis ut de fructus earumdem
-non corrodant nec ...... et ibidem supplicantes a cunctis alliis
-adversitatibus liberare ut tandem de eisdem fructibus debite vivere
-possint et eorum necessitatibus subvenire et semper in omnibusque
-glorificare laudare eumdem Dominum et Redemptorem nostrum et in eodem
-fidem et spem nostram totaliter cohibenda a devastatione prefatarum
-vinearum et nos liberare a cunctis alliis adversitatibus dummodo sic ut
-supra ejus mandata servaverimus et hoc absque allia fulminatione
-censurarum ecclesiasticarum quas distulimus fulminare donec premissis
-debite adimpletis et alliud a prefatis superioribus nostris habuerimus in
-mandatis literas quatenus expediat in exequutionem omnium et singulorum
-premissorum decernentes ...... Post ...... insertionem dicte ordinationis
-dicti scindici Sancti Julliani petierunt sibi concedi literas quas
-concedimus datas in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die decima sexta
-mensis maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo septimo.
-
-Franciscus de Crosa Vic.{s} et Off.{s} gen.{lis} Maurianne.
-
- FAURE
-
-Per eumdem R. D. Maurianne generalem Vicarium et Officialem.
-
-(_locus sigilli._)
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quinta mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne Franciscus Ameneti consindicus Sancti
-Julliani asserens venisse a loco sancti Julliani ad fines remittendi in
-manibus egregii Anthonii Fillioli procuratoris Animalium brutorum cedulam
-signatam _Rembaud_ producendam pro deffensione dictorum Animalium
-quiquidem egregius Fillioli produxit realiter eandem cedulam incohantem
-_Approbando_ etc. signatam _Rembaud_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens
-pro ut in eadem cedula continetur. Hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi
-procurator dictorum sindicorum Sancti Julliani agentium petiit copiam
-dicte cedule. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam duodecimam presentis mensis
-junii nisi etc. ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum
-eidem concedendo copiam dicte cedule per eum requisitam. Datum in civitate
-Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULE
-
-Approbando et in quantum de facta in medium adducendo ea que hoc in
-processu antea facto fuerunt et potissimum scedulam productam ex parte
-egregii Baudrici procuratoris Animalium signatam _Claudius Morellus_
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator et eo nomine a reverendo domino
-Vicario constitutus occasione tuendorum ac deffendendorum Animalium de
-quibus hoc in processo agitur ut in actis ad quae impugn ...... super
-relatio habeatur et brevibus agendo ac realiter deffendendo excipit et
-opponit ac multum miratur de hujusmodi processu tam contra personas
-agentium quam contra insolitum et inusitatum modum et formam procedendi de
-eo saltem modo quo hactenus processum fuit maxime cum agitur de
-excommunicatione Animalium quod fieri non potest quia omnis excommunicatio
-aut fertur ratione contumaciae _cap. primo_ et ibi Gr. _De sententiis
-excommunicationis lib._ 6. at cum certum est dicta animalia in contumacia
-constitui non posse quia legitime citari non possunt per consequens via
-excommunicationis Agentes uti non possunt nec debent eo maxime quod Deus
-ante hominis creationem ipsa Animalia creavit ut habetur Genesi ib.
-_Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo jumenta et reptilia et
-bestias terre secondum species suas benedixitque eis dicens crescite et
-multiplicamini et replete aquas maris avesque multiplicentur super terram_
-quod non fecisset nisi sub spe quod dicta Animalia vita fruerentur tum
-quod ipse Deus optimus maximus creator omnium Animalium tam rationabilium
-quam irrationabilium cunctis Animalibus suum dedit esse et vesci super
-terram unicuique secondum suam propriam naturam certum est et potissimum
-plantas ad hoc creavit ut animalibus deservirent est enim ordo naturalis
-quod plante sunt in nutrimentum Animalium et ...... quedam in nutrimentum
-aliorum et omnia in ...... hominis. Genes: 9: ibi _Quasi olera virentia
-tradidi vobis omnia a Deo_ quod dicta Animalia de quibus Adversantes
-conqueruntur modum vivendi a legi ordinatum non videtur egredi tum quia
-bruta sensu et usu rationis carentia que non secondum legem divinam
-gentium canonicam vel civilem sed secondum legem naturae primordialis qua
-Animalia cuncta docuit vivere solo instinctu naturae vivunt et ut ait
-Philosophus _actus activorum non operantur in patienti_ ...... tum quia
-jura naturalia sunt immutabilia Sec. _Sed naturalia Instit.: de jur natur.
-gent. et civili._ ergo cum dicta Animalia solo instinctu naturae dicantur
-per consequens excommunicanda non veniunt. Et quamvis dicta Animalia
-hominibus subjecta esse dicantur ut habetur Ecclesiast: 17. ibi _Posuit
-timorem illius super omnem carnem et bestiarum ac volatilium_ non idcirco
-adversus talia Animalia licet subjecta uti non debent excommunicatione nec
-ullo modo veniunt petita executioni mandanda saltem modo petito presertim
-cum ratio et aequitas dicta Animalia non regat. Et licet juribus divino
-antiquo civili et canonico promulgatum legitur _Qui seminat metet_ ut
-habetur Esai 37 ibi. _In anno autem tertio seminate et mettete et plantate
-vineas et commedite fructum earum_ non tamen cequitur (_sic_) quin dicta
-Animalia plantis non utantur quia sunt irrationabilia et carentia sensu
-neque ea posse dicernere quae sunt usui hominum destinata vel non
-certissimum est quia solo instinctu nature ut supra dictum est vivunt non
-idcirco necesse habent Agentes adversus dicta Animalia uti
-excommunicatione sed ...... peccata eorum universus populus presertim quem
-hujusmodi flagella affligunt et prosequuntur et poenitentiam agat exemplo
-Ninivitarum qui ad solam vocem Jone prophete austeriter poenitentiam
-egerunt ad mittigandam et placandam iram Dei. Jon. 3. veniat populus et
-imploret misericordiam Dei optimi et sic maximi ut sua sancta gratia et
-per merita sanctissimae passionis excessum dictorum Animalium compessere
-et refrenare dignetur et hoc modo dicta Animalia e vineis ejicient et non
-eo modo quo procedunt. Quibus universis consideratis evidentissime patet
-dicta Animalia e vitibus seu e vineis ejicienda non esse attento quod solo
-instinctu naturae vivunt et ita per egregium Anthonium Fillioli eorumdem
-Brutorum legittimi actoris fieri instatur et ab ipso petitur ipsum
-monitorium requisitum in quantum concernit dicta Animalia revocari et
-annullari nec aliquo modo consentiendo quod dictum monitorium eis
-concedatur nec etiam aliqui visitationi vinearum ut est conclusum per
-Agentes in eorum supplicatione protestando de omni nullitate et hoc omni
-meliori modo via jure ac forma salvis aliis quibuscumque juribus ac
-deffentionibus competentibus aut competituris humiliter implorato benigno
-officio judicis.
-
- PETRUS REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die duodecima mensis junii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et
-egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit viam
-precludi parti quidquiam ulterius deliberandi et producendi. Inde et nos
-Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus premissis diem assignamus
-veneris proximam decimam nonam presentis mensis nisi etc. ad ibidem
-judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine
-quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne
-die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris decima nona mensis junii preassignata
-comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicarium generalem Maurianne prefato
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Sancti Julliani
-Agentium producens cedulam incohantem _Etiam si cuncta_ et signatam
-_Franciscus Fay_ dicens concludens et fieri requirens pro ut et
-quemadmodum in eadem cedula continetur.
-
-Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium
-conventorum petiit copiam dicte cedulae cum termino deliberandi et
-respondendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa
-partibus premissis diem assignamus veneris proximam vigessimam sextam
-hujus mensis junii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et tunc per dictum Fillioli nomine quo supra quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die sabatti vigesima septima mensis junii subrogata ob
-diem feriatum intervenientem comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario
-generali prefato Catherinus Ameneti consindicus Sancti Julliani jurat
-venisse cum egregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens
-realiter cedulam signatam _Fay_ dicens concludens prout in eadem cedula
-continetur. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator Animalium petens copiam
-cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius prefatus copia
-prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximi
-quartam instantis mensi jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram
-nobis comprehendum est tunc per dictum egregium Fillioli quid voluerit
-deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULAE
-
-Etiamsi cuncta ante hominem sint creata ex Genesi non sequitur laxas
-habenas concessas fore immo contra ut ibidem colligitur et apud D... in I.
-par. q. 26. ar. I. et psal. 8. Corin. 5. hominem fore creatum ac
-constitutum ut coeteris creaturis dominaretur ac orbem terrarum in
-aequitate et justitia disponeret. Non enim homo contemplatione aliarum
-creaturarum habet esse sed contra. Nec reperitur illam dominationem circa
-bruta animantia ac eorum respectu suscipere limitationem verum in divinis
-cavetur omne genuflecti in nomine Jesu.
-
-Sed cum circa materiam majores nostri satis scripserint in actis
-reassumptis et nihil novi adductum ex adverso inveniatur frustra
-resumerentur. Unde inherendo responsis spectabilis domini Yppolyti de
-Collo et postquam constat fore satisffactum ordinationi nihil est quod
-impediri possit fines supplicatos adversus Animalia de quorum conqueritur
-ad quod concluditur ac justitiam ministrari omni meliori modo implorato
-benigno officio.
-
- FRANC FAETI
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die quarta mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter coram
-nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator dictorum Animalium producens cedulam incohantem _Licet multis_
-signatam _Rembaudi_ dicens et concludens prout in eadem cedula continetur
-hinc et egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator dictorum Agentium petit
-copiam cedule cum termino deliberandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis
-Maurianne prefatus copia prepetita concessa partibus premissis diem
-assignamus sabbati proximam undecimam presentis mensis jullii nisi etc. ad
-ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum egregium
-Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum
-Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso at die quarta jullii comparuerunt coram nobis Vicario
-prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Agentium petit alium
-terminum. Hinc et egregius Anthonius Fillioli procurator Conventorum
-inheret cedulatis suis et fieri petitis super quibus petit justitiam sibi
-ministrari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus partibus
-premissis diem assignamus sabbati proximam decimam octavam presentis
-mensis jullii nisi etc. ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis comparendum et
-tunc per dictum Bertrandi nomine quo supra quid voluerit deliberare
-deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-COPIA CEDULAE
-
-Licet multis in locis reperiatur hominem creatum fuisse ut caeteris
-Animalibus et creaturis dominaretur non idcirco opus est ut Agentes
-adversus dicta Animalia excommunicatione utantur sed via usitata et
-ordinaria et praesertim ut dictum est quod dicta Animalia jus naturae
-sequantur quod quidem jus nusquam immitatum (_sic_) reperitur nam jus
-divinum et naturale pro eodem sumuntur. Can. I. dist. I. at jus divinum
-mutari non potest quod est in preceptis moralibus et naturalibus per
-consequens nec jus naturale mutari potest nam jus naturale manat ab
-honesto nempe ac ratione immortali et perpetua, at ratio jubet ut dicta
-Animalia vivant potissimum hiis nempe plantis que ad usum dictorum
-Animalium videntur creata ut supra dictum est ergo Agentes nulla ratione
-debent uti via excommunicationis. Igitur ne in causa ulterius progrediatur
-potissimum cum cedula pro parte Sindicorum totius communitatis Sancti
-Julliani producta signata _Fran: Faeti._ nullam penitus mereatur
-responsionem obstante quod nihil novi in dicta cedula propositum
-comperitur etiam quod contentis cedulae parte gregii (egregii) Anthonii
-Fillioli procuratorio nomine dictorum Animalium producte mimime sit
-responsum idcirco cum omnia que videbantur adducenda ex parte dictorum
-Animalium adducta et proposita fuerunt ut ample patet in dicta cedula
-superius producta signata: _P. Rembaudus._ ad quam impugnatus semper
-relatio habeatur non igitur alia ex parte dictorum Animalium adducenda nec
-proponenda videntur presertim ut dictum est quod ratio et equitas dicta
-Animalia non regat quapropter egregius Anthonius Fillioli nemine dictorum
-Animalium suppra relatorum suoe cedule et fieri recuisitis inhoerendo
-concludit super eis jus dici et deffiniri et justiciam sibi in hujusmodi
-causa adversam fieri et promulgari implorans benignum officium omni
-melliori modo.
-
- P. REMBAUDUS
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die decima octava mensis jullii comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario prefato egregius Petremandus Bertrandi procurator
-Agentium petens alium terminum. Hinc et egregius Fillioli procurator
-dictorum Animalium petit viam precludi parti quidquam ulterius
-articullandi et deducendi et inherendo suis cedulatis petit sibi justitiam
-ministrari. Inde et nos vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus de consensu
-procuratorum dictarum partium ipsis partibus diem assignamus primam
-juridicam post messes ad ibidem coram nobis comparendum et tunc per dictum
-egregium Bertrandi nomine quo suppra quid voluerit precise deliberare
-deliberandum.
-
-MEMORIALE
-
-Anno premisso et die veneris vigesima quarta mensis juli comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius
-Petremandus Bertrandi procurator Sindicorum Agentium produxit
-testimoniales sumptas per communitatem Sancti Julliani congregatam coram
-visecastellano Maurianne continentes declarationem loci quem offerunt
-relaxare et assignare eisdem Animalibus pro eorum pabulo quathenus
-indigent ad formam earumdem testimonialium signatarum _Prunier_ adversus
-quas petit adverso viam precludi quicquam opponendi et exipiendi et
-deffendendi quominus dicta Animalia devastantia non debeant arceri ambigi
-cogi et in virtute sancte Dei obedientiae vineta loci predicti Sancti
-Julliani relinquere et in locum assignatum accedere et divertire ne
-deimpceps (deinceps) officiant eisdem vineis que sunt usui humano
-pernecessariae et alias ulterius super cause exigentia provideri benignum
-officium R. D. V. implorando et ita intimari egregio Fillioli procuratori
-ex adverso.
-
-Quiquidem egregius Fillioli procurator dictorum Animalium petiit copiam et
-communicationem dictarum testimonialium cum termino deliberandi et
-deffendendi.
-
-Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus copia et communicatione
-prepetitis concessis partibus premissis diem assignamus primam juridicam
-post ferias messium proxime venturam ad ibidem judicialiter coram nobis
-comparendum et hinc per dictum egregium Fillioli nomine quo suppra quid
-voluerit deliberare deliberandum. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-EXTRAICT DU REGESTRE DE LA CURIALLITE DE SAINCT JULLIEN
-
-Du penultiesme jour du moys de juing mil cinq cent huictante sept.
-
-Ont comparu pardevant Nous Jehan Jullien Depupet notaire ducal et
-Vichastellain pour son Altesse au lieu de Sainct Jullien et Montdenix
-honnestes Francoys et Catherin Aimenetz conscindicz dudict lieu maistres
-Jehan Modere Andre Guyons Pierre Depupet notaires ducaulx maistre Reymond
-Thabuys honnestes Claude Charvin Jehan Prunier Claude Fay Francys Humbert
-et Vuilland Duc conseilliers dudict lieu avec des manantz et habitantz
-dudit lieu les deux partyes les troys faisantz le tout tous assembles au
-son de la cloche au Parloir damon place publicque dudit lieu de Sainct
-Jullien au conseil general suyvant la publication d'icelluy faicte
-cejoudhuy mattin a lyssue de la parocchielie dudit lieu et au lieu ce fere
-accoustume par Guilliaume Morard metral dudict lieu ce a Nous rapportant
-disantz les susnommez scindicz comme au proces pas eulx au nom de ladicte
-communaulte intenre et poursuyvy contre les Animaulx brutes vulgairement
-appelez Amblevins pardevant le Seigneur Reverendissime Evesque et Prince
-de Maurianne ou son Official est requis et necessayre syvant le conseil a
-eulx donne par le sieur Fay leur advocat de ballier ausdictz Animaulx
-place et lieu de souffizante pasture hors les vigniables dudict lieu de
-Sainct Jullien et de celle qu'il y en puissent vivre pour eviter de manger
-ny gaster lesdictes vignes. A ceste cause ont tous les susnommes et
-aultres y assembles delibere leur offrir la place et lieu appelle la Grand
-Feisse ou elle se treuvera souffizante pour les pasturer et que le sieur
-advocat et procureur diceulx Animaux se veuillent contempter laquelle
-place est assize sur les fins dudict Sainct Jullien audessus du village de
-Claret jouxte la Combe descendant de Roche noyre passant par le Crosset du
-levant la Combe de Mugnier du couchant ladicte Roche noyre dessus la Roche
-commencant a la Gieclaz du dessoubz laquelle place sus coufinee centient
-de quarent a cinquante sesteries ou environ peuplee et garnye de plusieurs
-espresses de boes plantes et feuillages comme foulx allagniers cyrisiers
-chesnes planes et aultres arbres et buissons oultre lerbe et pasture qui y
-est en asses bonne quantite a laquelle les susnommes au nom de ladicte
-communaulte lon offre ny prendre chose que ce soyt moing permettre a leur
-sceu y es tre prins et emporte chose que soyt dans lesdictz confins soyt
-par gens ou bestes saufz toutteffoys que ou le passaige des personnes y
-seroyt necessayre a quelque lieu ou endroit ou lon ne puisse passer par
-ledict lieu sans fere aulcung prejudice a la pasture desdicts Animaulx
-comme aussi dy pouvoir tirer mynes de colleurs et aultres si alcune en y a
-dequoy lesdictz Animaulx ne se peuvent servir pour vivre et par ce que le
-lieu est une seure retraicte en temps de guerre ou aultres troubles par ce
-quelle est garnye des fontaynes qui aussi servira ausdictz Animaulx se
-reservent sy pouvoir retirer au temps susdict et de necessite et de leur
-passer contract de ladicte piece aux conditions susdictes tel que sera
-requis et en bonne forme et vallable a perpetuyte a tel sy que ou le Sieur
-Advocat et Procureur desdicts Animaulx ne ce contenteroyent de ladite
-place pour la substentation et vivre diceulx animaux visitation
-prealablement faicte si elle y exchoict de leur en baillier davantage
-allieurs. Et de laquelle deliberation les susnommes Scindics conselliers
-et aultres Nous ont requis acte leur octroyer que leur avons concede
-audict lieu du Parloir damont place publique dudict Sainct Jullien en
-presence de Pierre Reymond de Montriond Urban Geymen de Sainct Martin de
-la Porte et de Janoct Poinct de la paroisse de Montdenix tesmoingtz a ce
-requis et a ce dessus assistantz les an et jour que dessus.
-
- L. PRUMIER
- _curial_
-
-MEMORIALE CONTINUATIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die undecima mensis augusti comparuerunt im banco actorum
-judicialium episcopatus Maurianne procuratores ambarum partium qui citra
-prejudicium jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et continuaverunt
-assignationem datam ipsis partibus usque ad vigesimam presentis mensis
-augusti. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-ALIA CONTINUATIO
-
-Anno premisso et die vigesima mensis augusti comparuerunt in eodem bancho
-egregius Petremandus Bertrandi et Anthonius Fillioli procuratores partium
-lictigantium quiquidem de consensu eorumdem et citra prejudicium jurium
-partium et actento transitu armigerorum prorogaverunt assignationem ad
-hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam vigesimam septimam hujus
-mensis Augusti. Datum Maurianne die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE REASSOMPTIONIS
-
-Anno premisso et die jovis vigesimam septimam augusti comparuerunt
-judicialiter coram nobis Vicario prefato procuratores ambarum partium
-quiquidem citra derogationem jurium ipsarum partium prorogaverunt et
-continuationem ad hodie cadentem usque ad diem jovis proximam tertiam
-instantis mensis septembris. Datum die et anno premissis.
-
-MEMORIALE AD JUS
-
-Anno premisso et die tertia mensis septembris comparuerunt judicialiter
-coram nobis Vicario generali Maurianne prefato egregius Anthonius Fillioli
-procurator Animalium brutorum qui visis testimonialibus productis parte
-dictorum Agentium continentibus assignationem loci quem obtulerunt
-relaxare et assignare dictis Animalibus pro eorum pabulo dicit eumdem
-locum non esse sufficientem nec idoneum pro pabulo dictorum Animalium cum
-sit locus sterilis et nullius redditus. Et ampliando omnia et quecumque
-agitata in presenti processu parte dictorum Animalium petit Agentes
-repelli cum expensis et jus sibi ministrari. Hinc et egregius Petremandus
-Bertrandi procurator Scindicorum Sancti Julliani Agentium dicit locum
-destinatum et oblatum esse idoneum plenum virgultis et parvis arboribus
-prout ex testimonialibus oblationis constat et latius constare quathenus
-opus sit offert inherens suis conclusionibus petit jus dici et ordinari ac
-pronunciari. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne prefatus mandamus
-nobis remitti acta ad fines providendi prout juris assignando partes ad
-ordinandum. Datum in civitate Sancti Johannis Maurianne die et anno
-premissis.
-
-ORDINATIO IN CAUSA SCINDICORUM SANCTI JULLIANI SUPPLICANTIUM EX UNA
-
-_contra Animalia bruta ad formam muscarum volantia coloris viridis
-Supplicata_
-
-Visis actis dictorum Agentium signanter primo memoriali tento in eadem
-causa sub die vigesima secunda mensis aprilis anni 1545 coram spectabili
-domino Francisco Bonivardi jurium doctori--cedula producta parte egregii
-Petri Falconis procuratoris dictorum Animalium incipiente _Ut appareat_
-etc. signata _Claudius Morellus_--tenore supplicationis porrecte parte
-dictorum Agentium--tenore monitorii abjecti desuper ipsa supplicatione
-sub die 25 aprilis anni predicti millesimi quingentesimi quadragesimi
-quinti signati _Daprilis_--ordinatione lata in eadem causa sub die
-duodecima mensis junii ejusdem anni--testimonialibus visitationis facte
-per egregium Matheum Daprili signatis _Daprili_--cedula producta nomine
-ipsorum Animalium incipiente _Visitatio_ et signata _Claudius
-Morellus_--allia cedula producta parte dictorum Agentium incipiente _Etsi
-rationes_ etc. signata _Petrus de Collo_--tenore ordinationis late in
-eadem causa sub die sabatti octava mensis maii anni 1546 signate
-Michaelis--memoriali reassumptionis tento sub die tresdecima mensis
-aprilis anni presentis 1587--ordinatione lata in eadem causa per
-reverendum dominum Franciscum de Crosa antecessorem nostrum sub die decima
-sexta mensis maii anni presentis--supplicatione porrecta parte dictorum
-Agentium signata _Franciscus Faeti_--litteris obtentis virtute dicte
-ordinationis sub die decima sexta dicti mensis--attestatione signata
-_Romanet_ sub die 24 ejusdem mensis maii--cedula producta pro parte
-dictorum Animalium incipiente _Approbando_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--allia cedula producta parte Agentium signata _Franciscus
-Faeti_ incipiente _Etiam si cuncta_ etc.--allia cedula producta pro parte
-Animalium incipiente _Licet multis_ etc. signata _Petrus
-Rembaudus_--memoriali tento sub die vicesima quarta mensis jullii proxime
-fluxi--testimonialibus signatis _Prunier_ sumptis coram Vicecastellano
-Maurianne sub die penultima mensis junii anni presentis continentibus
-declarationem loci quem dicti Agentes obtulerunt relaxare pro pabulo
-dictorum Animalium--memoriale ad jus tento coram eodem domino Vicario
-antecessore nostro sub die tertia mensis septembris proxime
-fluxi--ceterisque videndis diligenter consideratis.
-
-Nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne subsignatus antequam ad diffinitivam
-procedamus dicimus et ordinamus in primis et ante omnia esse inquirendum
-super statu
-
- loci oblati p....
- quem locum....
- visitandum....
- mensem ut f....
- et nobis rem....
- fuerit provid....
- Mermetus vis....
- generalis....
- in civitate S....
- die decima....
- anno domini....
- octuagesimo sep....
- Petremandi Bertr....
- dictorum Scind....
- et egregii....
- dictorum Animal.
- ordinationem....
- acceptandum....
- facit die et....
-
-(pro visitatione III flor)
-
-_locus sigilli._
-
-Solverunt Scindici Sancti Julliani incluso processu Animalium sigillo
-ordinationum et pro copia que competat in processu dictorum Animalium
-omnibus inclusis XVI flor.
-
-Item pro sportulis domini Vicarii III flor--20 decembre 1587.
-
-Published by Leon Menebrea in the appendix to his treatise: _De l'Origine,
-de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au Moyen-age contre les
-Animaux_, Chambery, 1846. Cf. _Memoires de la Societe Royale Academique de
-Savoie_, Tome xii. pp. 524-57, where it first appeared.
-
- * * * * *
-
-According to M. J. Desnoyers (_Recherches sur la coutume d'exorciser et
-d'excommunier les insectes et autres animaux nuisibles a l'agriculture_,
-p. 15), it is still the custom, in Provence, Languedoc, le Bordelais, and
-other provinces of France, for the peasants to ask the country curates for
-prayers, sprinklings with holy water, consecrated boughs, and
-extraordinary processions, for the purpose of expelling noxious insects
-from the vineyards and warding off disease from the grapes and the
-silkworms. These ceremonies are accompanied with adjurations and
-maledictions. In Protestant lands official days of fasting and prayer are
-supposed to produce the same results.
-
-The form of exorcism given by an Antwerp canon, Maximilian d'Eynatten, in
-his _Manuale Exorcismorum_, is as follows:--"Exorcizo et adjuro vos,
-pestiferi vermes, per Deum patrem omnipotentem [+], et per Jesum Christum
-[+] filium ejus Dominum nostrum, et Spiritum Sanctum [+] ab utroque
-procedentem, ut confestim recedatis ab his campis, pratis, hortis, vineis,
-aquis, si Dei providentia adhuc vitam vobis indulgeat, nec amplius in eis
-habitetis, sed ad illa ac talia loca transeatis, ubi nullis Dei servis
-nocere poteritis. Vobis, si per maleficium diabolicum hic estis, pro parte
-divinae majestatis, totius curiae coelestis, necnon ecclesiae hic adhuc
-militantis, impero, ut deficiatis in vobisipsis, ac decrescatis, quatenus
-reliquiae de vobis nullae reperiantur, nisi ad gloriam Dei et ad usum et
-salutem humanum conducibiles. Quod praestare dignetur qui venturus est
-judicare viros et mortuos et saeculum per ignem, Resp.--Amen." _Thesaurus
-Exorcismorum, Coloniae_, 1626, p. 1204.
-
-
-B
-
-II[4]
-
-DE L'EXCELLENCE DES MONITOIRES
-
-PAR GASPARD BAILLY
-
-Il ne favt pas mepriser les Monitoires, veu que c'est vne chose grandement
-importante, portant auec soy le glaiue, le plus dangereux dont nostre Mere
-sainte l'Eglise se sert, qui est l'Excommunication, qui taille aussi bien
-le bois sec que le verd, n'epargnant ny les viuans, ni les morts; et ne
-frappe pas seulement les Creatures raisonnables, mais s'attache aux
-irraisonnables, tels que sont les animaux. Les exemples en sont frequens,
-pour preuue de cette verite. Car on a veu en plusieurs endroits qu'on a
-excommunie les bestioles et insectes, qui apportoient du dommage aux
-fruits de la terre, et obeissans aux commandemens de l'Eglise se
-retiroient dans le lieu ordonne par la sentence de l'Euesque qui leur
-formoit leur proces. Au Siecle passe, il y auoit telle quantite
-d'Anguilles dans le Lac de Geneue, qu'elles gastoient tout le Lac: De sort
-que les Habitans de la Ville et enuirons, recoururent a l'Euesque pour
-les Excommunier, ce qu'ayant este fait, le Lac fut deliure de ces
-animaux.
-
-Du temps de Charles Duc de Bourgogne fils de Philippe le Bon, il y eut
-telle quantite de Sauterelles en Bresse, en Italie qu'elles mirent presque
-la famine dans tout le Mantouean, si on n'y eut apporte du secours par
-l'Excommunication, et de ce nous parle Altiat dans ses Emblemes, sous
-l'intitulation _nihil reliqui_.
-
- _Scilicet hoc deerat post tot mala denique nostris,
- Locustae vt raperent, quidquid inesset agris.
- Uidimus innumeras Euro Duce tendere turmas;
- Qualia non Athilae, Castrave Cersis erant.
- Hae faenum milium farra omnia consumpserunt;
- Spes in Augusto est, stant nisi vota super._
-
-On raconte en la vie de S. Bernard, qu'il se leua vne si grande quantite
-de Mouches, d'vne Eglise qu'on auoit basti a Loudun, que par le myen du
-bruit qu'elles faisoient, elles empechoient a ceux qui entroient de prier
-Diev, ce que voyant le S. Personage il les Excommunia, de sorte qu'elles
-tomberent toutes mortes ayant couuert le paue de l'Eglise.
-
-Nous lisons qu'en l'annee 1541, il y eut vne telle quantite de Sauterelles
-en Lombardie, qui tomberent d'vne nuee; qu'ayant mange les fruits de la
-terre, elles causerent la famine en ces lieux-la. Elles estoient longues
-d'vne doigt, grosse teste, le ventre remply de vilenie et ordure;
-lesquelles estant mortes infecterent l'Air de si mauuaises odeurs, que les
-Courbeaux et autres animaux carnassiers ne les pouuoient supporter.
-
-On dit aussi qu'en Pologne il y eut aussi telle quantite de ces animaux au
-commencement sans aisles, et apres ils en eurent quatre, qu'ils couuroient
-deux mille, et d'vne coudee d'auteur, et tellement epaisses qu'en volant
-elles leuoient la veuee de la clarte du Soleil, ces animaux firent un
-degat non-pareil aux biens de la terre, et ne purent estre chasses par
-autre force ny industrie, que par la malediction Ecclesiastique.
-
-Saint Augustin raconte au Liure de la Cite de Dieu, Chap. dernier, qu'en
-Afrique il y eut telle quantite de Sauterelles, et si prodigieuses,
-qu'ayans mange tous les fruits, feueiles, et ecorces des arbres iusques a
-la racine, elles s'eleuerent comme vne nuee; et tombees en la Mer,
-causerent vne peste si forte, qu'en vn seul Royaume il y morut huit cens
-mille Habitans.
-
-Du temps de Lotaire troisieme Empereur apres Charlemagne, il y eut dans la
-France des Sauterelles en nombre prodigieux, ayans six aisles auec deux
-dents plus dures que de pierre, qui couurirent toute la terre, comme de la
-neige, et gasterent tous les fruits, arbres, ble, et foins, et tels
-animaux ayans este jettes a la Mer; il s'ensuiuit vne telle corruption en
-l'Air, que la peste rauageat grande quantite de monde en ce pays la. Voila
-quantite d'exemples quo nous font voir le dommage que nous apportent ces
-bestioles et insectes. Maintenant voyons comme on leur forme leur proces
-afin de s'en garantir par le moyen de la malediction que leur donne
-l'Eglise.
-
-Premierement, sur la Requeste presentee par les Habitans du lieu qui
-souffrent le dommage, on fait informer sur le degat que tels animaux ont
-fait, et estoient en danger de faire, laquelle information rapportee, le
-Juge Ecclesiastique donne vn Curateur a ses bestioles pour se presenter en
-jugement, par Procureur, et la deduire toutes leurs raisons, et se
-defendre contre les Habitans qui veulent leur faire quitter le lieu, ou
-elles estoient, et les raisons veues et considerees, d'vne part et d'autre
-il rend sa Sentence. Ce que vous verrez clairement par le moyen du
-plaidoyer suiuant.
-
-_Requeste des Habitans_
-
-Svpplie hvmblement N. Exposans comme riere le liieu de N. il y a quantite
-de Souris, Taupes, Sauterelles et autres animaux insectes, qui mangent les
-bles, vignes et autres fruits de la terre, et font vn tel degat aux bles,
-et raisins qu'ils n'y laissent rien, d'ou les pauures supplians souffrent
-notable prejudice, la prise pendante par racine estant consommee par ces
-animaux, ce qui causera vne famine insupportable.
-
-Qui les fait recourir a la Bonte, Clemence et Misericorde de Dieu, a ce
-qu'il vous plaise faire en sorte que ces animaux ne gastent, et mangent
-les fruits de la terre qu'il a pleu a Dieu d'enuoyer pour l'entretient des
-hommes, afin que les supplians puissent vacquer, auec plus de deuotions au
-seruice Diuin, et sur ce il vous plaira pouruoir.
-
-_Plaidoyer des Habitans_
-
-Messievrs, ces pauures Habitans qui sont a genouy les larmes a l'oeil,
-recourent a votre Iustice, comme firent autre-fois ceux des Isles Maiorque
-et Minorque, qui enuoyerent vers Aug. Cesar pour demander des Soldats,
-afin de les defendre, et exempter du rauage que les Lapins leur faisoient:
-vous aues des armes plus fortes que les Soldats de cette Empereur pour
-garantir les pauures supplians de la faim et necessite de laquelle ils
-sont menaces, par le rauage que font ces bestioles, qui n'epargnent ny
-ble, ny vignes; rauage semblable a celuy que faisoit vn Sanglier, qui
-gasta toutes les Terres, Vignes, et Oliuiers du Royaume de Calidon, dont
-parle Homere dans le premier Liure de son Hiliade, ou de ce Renard qui fut
-enuoye par Themis a Thebes, qui n'epargnoit ny les fruits de la terre, ny
-le bestail attaquant les Paysans mesmes. Vous scauez assez les maux que
-raporte la faim, vous aues trop de douceur, et de Iustice pour les laisser
-engager dans cette misere qui contraint a s'abandonner a des choses
-illicites, et cruelles, _nec enim rationem patitur, nec vlla aeequitate
-mitigatur: nec prece vlla flectitur esuriens populus_: Temoins les Meres
-dont il est parle au quatrieme des Roys, qui pendant la famine de Samarie,
-mangerent les enfans, l'une de l'autre. _Da filium tuum, vt comedamus
-hodie, et filium meum comedimus cras: Coximus ergo filium meum, et
-comedimus. Quid turpe non cogit fames, sed nihil turpe, nihilve, vetitum
-esuriens credit, sola enim cura est, vt qualicumque sorte iuuetur._ La
-mort qui vient par la famine est la plus cruelle entant qu'elle est pleine
-de langueurs, debilites et foiblesses de coeur, qui sont autant de
-nouuelles, et diuerses especes de mort.
-
- _Dura quidem miseris, mors est, mortalibus omnis,
- At perijsse fame, Res vna miserrima longe est._
-
-Et Auian Marcellin dit, _Mortis grauissimum genus, et vltimum malorum fame
-perire_. Ie crois que vous aures compassion, de ce pauuve Peuple, si on
-vous le represente, par aduance en l'estat qu'il serait reduit si la faim
-l'accabloit.
-
- _Hirtus erat crinis, cana lumina, pallor in ore,
- Labia incana siti, scabri rubigine dentes.
- Dura cutis, per quam spectari viscera possunt.
- Ossa sub incuruis extabant arida lumbis;
- Ventus erat, pro ventre locus._
-
-Les Gabaonistes, reuestus d'habits dechires, et des visages affames, auec
-de contenances toutes tristes, firent pitie et compassion au grand
-Capitaine Iouse, et en cet estar obtiendrent grace et misericorde.
-
-Les Informations et visites qui ont este faites par vos commandements,
-vous instruisent suffisamment du degat que ces animaux ont fait. Ensuite
-dequoy on a fait les formalites requises et necessaires, ne restant plus
-maintenant que d'adjuger les fins et conclusions prises par la Requeste
-des demandeurs, qui sont ciuiles et raisonnables, sur lesquelles il vois
-plaira de faire reflection, et a cet effet leur enioindre de quitter le
-lieu et se retirer dans la place qui leur sera ordonnees en faisant les
-execrations requises et necessaires, ordonnees par nostre Mere Sainte
-l'Eglise, a quoy les pauures demandeurs concluent.
-
-_Plaidoyer pour les Insectes_
-
-Messievrs, depuis que vous m'aues choisi pour la defense ces pauures
-bestioles, il vois plaira que je remontre leur droit, et fasse voir que
-les formalites, qu'on a faites contre elles, sont nulles: m'etonnant fort
-de la facon qu'on en vse, on donne des plaintes contre elles, comme si
-elles auoient commis quelque crime, on fait informer du degat qu'on
-pretend qu'elles ayent fait, on les fait assigner par-deuant le Juge pour
-respondre, et comme on scait qu'elles sont muettes, le Juge voulant
-suppleer a ce defaut, leur donne vn Aduocat, pour representer en Justice
-les raisons qu'elles ne peuuent deduire; et parceq; Messieurs, il vous a
-pleu de me donner la liberte de parler pour les pauures animaux, je diray
-pour leur defence en premier lieu.
-
-Qve l'adiovrnement laxe contr'elles est nul comme laxe contre des bestes,
-qui ne peuuent, ny doiuent se presenter en jugement; la raison est, que
-celuy qu'on appelle, doit estre capable de raison, et doit agir librement,
-pour pouuoir connoitre vn delict. Or est-il que les animaux estans priues
-de cette lumiere qui a este donnee au seul homme, il faut conclurre par
-necessaire consequence, que telle procedure est nulle; cecy est tire de la
-Loi premieree, _ff. si quadrupes, pauper feciss. dicat_; et voyci les
-mots. _Nec enim potest animal, iniuriam fecisse, quod sensu caret._
-
-La seconde raison est, que l'on ne peut appeller personne en jugement sans
-cause; car autrement celuy qui fait adjourner quelqu'vn sans raison, il
-doit subir la peine portee sous le tiltre des instituts _de poen. tem.
-litig._ Mais ces animaux ne sont obliges par aucune cause, ny en aucune
-facon, _non tenentur enim ex contractu_, estans incapables de contracter,
-_neque ex quasi contractu, neque ex stipulatione, neque ex pacto_, moins
-_ex delicto, seu quasi_; parce que comme il a este dit cy-deuant, pour
-commettre vn crime, il faut estre capable de raison, qui ne se rencontre
-pas aux animaux, qui sont priues de son vsage.
-
-De plus dans la Iustice, on ne doit rien faire qui ne porte coup, la
-Iustice en cela imitant la Nature; laquelle, comme dit le Philosophe, ne
-fait rien mal a propos, _Deus enim, et Natura nihil operantur frustra_. Je
-laisse a penser quest-ce qu'on pretend de faire ayant adjourne ces
-bestioles, elles ne viendront pas respondre; car elles sont muettes, elles
-ne constitueront pas des Procureurs, pour defendre leur cause, moins leur
-donneront des memoires, pour deduire en jugement, leur raison: Car elles
-sont priuees de raisonnement, en sorte que tel adjournement ne pouuant
-auoir aucun effect, est nul. Si donc l'adjournement qui est la base de
-tous les actes judiciels est nul, le reste comme en dependant, ne pourra
-subsister _cum enim principalis causa non consistat, neque ea quae
-consequuntur locum habent_.
-
-On dira peut-estre que si bien tels animaux, ne peuuent constituer vn
-Procureur, pour la defense de leur droict, et instruction de leur cause
-que le Juge de son office le peut faire, et partant que le fait du Juge,
-est le fait de la partie. A cela on respond qu'il est vray lors qu'il le
-fait selon la disposition du droict, _In administratione suae
-iurisdictionis_, mais non pas en ce cas, ou la partie n'en pouuait
-constituer, le Juge aussi, ne le peut faire, cecy est decide par la glose
-de la Loy 2 _ff. de administrat. res ad Civit. pertinent_, et pour preuue
-de cette proposition faite a propos L'axiaume qui dit _quod directe fieri
-prohibetur, per indirectum concedi non debet, cap. tuae de procuratoribus,
-gloss. c. 1. de consanguinibus, et affinibus_. Mais ce que je treuue plus
-estrange, on pretend faire prononcer contre ces pauures animaux vne
-Sentence d'Excommunication, d'Anathema et malediction, et a quel sujet
-vser contre des bestioles qui sont sans defense, du plus rigoureux glaiue
-que l'Eglise aye en sa main, qui ne punit et ne chatie que les Criminels;
-ces animaux estans incapables de faire faute, ni peche, parce que pour
-pecher il faut auoir la lumiere de la raison laquelle dicernant le bien
-d'auec le mal, nous monstre ce qu'il faut suiure, et ce qu'il faut fuir,
-et de plus il faut auoir la liberte de prendre l'vn et laisser l'autre.
-
-On vovdra peut-estre dire qu'elles ont manque en ce qu'elles ne se sont
-presentees ayant este adjurnees, et partant que la Contumace et defaut
-estant vn crime, on peut faire rendre contre elles Sentence Contumaciale,
-a cause de leur desobeissance: Mais a cela on respond qu'il ny a point de
-Contumace, ou il n'y a point d'adjournement, ou du moins qui soit valable
-_quia paria sunt non esse citatum, vel non esse legitime citatum, ita dd.
-communiter Bartol., in l. ea quae C. quomodo_, etc.
-
-De plus, si on prend garde a la definition de l'Excommunication, on verra
-qu'on ne peut prononcer telle Sentence contre ces animaux: car
-l'Excommunication est dite _extra Ecclesiam positio, vel e qualibet
-communione, vel e quolibet legitimo actu separatio_. Tellement que tels
-animaux ne peuuent estre dechasses de l'Eglise, n'y ayans jamais este,
-d'autant qu'elle est pour les hommes qui ont l'ame raisonnable, non pas
-pour les brutes, qui ne sont doueees d'aucune raison, et l'Apostre S. Paul
-_ad Corinth._ 5 dit _quod de iis quae foris sunt nihil ad nos quoad
-Excommunicationem, quia Excommunicare non possumus_, l'Excommunication
-_afficit animam non corpus, nisi per quandam consequentiam, cuius Medicina
-est_, cap. 1, _de sentent. Excomm. in 6._ C'est pourquoy l'ame de ces
-animaux, n'estant immortelle, elle ne peut estre touchee par telle
-Sentence, _quae vergit in dispendium aeternae salutis_.
-
-L'autre raison est, _quod facienti actum permissum non imputatur, id quod
-sequitur ex illo, licet consecutiuum sit repugnans statui_ suo cap. _de
-occidendis_ 23 q. 5 cap. _sicut dignum extra de homicid_. Ces animaux font
-vn acte permis mesme par le droit Diuin. Car il est dit dans la Genese
-_fecit Deus bestias terrae iuxta species suas, iumenta, et omne reptile
-terrae in genere suo dixitque Deus, ecce dedi vobis, omnem herbam
-afferentem semen super terram, et vniuersa ligna, quae habent in
-semetipsis sementem generis sui, vt sint vobis in escam; et cunctis
-animalibus terrae, omnique volucri coeli, vniversis quae mouentur in
-terris, et in quibus est anima viuens; vt habeat ad vescendum_. Que si les
-fruits de la terre ont este faits pour les animaux et pour les hommes, il
-leur est permis d'en manger et prendre leur nourriture, aussi Ciceron dit
-au premier des Offices _principio generi omnium animantium est a natura
-attributum, vt se vitam, corpusque tueantur, quaeque ad vescendum
-necessaria sunt inquirant_. Par ces raison on voit qu'ils n'ont commis
-aucun delict, ayant fait ce qui leur est permis par le droit Diuin et de
-Nature, et par ainsi ils ne peuuent estre punis, ny maudis, _cum etiam
-creaturae intellettuali, et rationali delinquenti seu damnum afferenti, eo
-quod secundum solitum facit; non est Angelo licitum maledicere, multo
-minus erit licitum homini_, veu qu'on lit dans l'Epistre de S. Iude, _cum
-altercaretur Michael cum Diabolo de corpore Moysis non fuit ausus
-maledicere_ Cap. _Si igitur Michael_, 23. _q._ 3. S. Thomas 2. 2. _q._ 76.
-dit que de donner des maledictions aux choses irraisonnables, estans
-Creatures de Dieu s'est peche de blasphemer et de les maudire, les
-considerans en eux mesmes, _est otiosum, et vanum, et per consequens
-illicitum_.
-
-Que si toutes ces raisons ne vous touchent, peut-estre cette-cy vous fera
-donner les mains, et persuadera a vostre Esprit, qu'on ne peut donner
-aucune sentence d'Excommunication contre elles ny jetter aucun Anatheme.
-Car prononcant telle Sentence s'est s'en pendre a Dieu, qui par sa justice
-le enuoye pour punir les hommes et chastier leurs peches, _immitamque in
-vos bestias agri quae consumant vos, et pecora vestra, et ad paucitatem
-cuncta redigant_, pouuant dire maintenant ce que Dieu a dit auant le
-Deluge _omnis Caro corrupit viam suam_. Et Ouide en ses Metamorphoses
-voyant que le vice auoit pris le haut bout, Triomphant, et faisant des
-conquestes par tout, au contraire la vertu estoit abaissee, exilee, et
-reduite en tel estat qu'elle ne treuuoit aucune demeure parmy les Hommes.
-
- _Protinus irrupit venae prioris in aeuum,
- Omne nefas, fugere pudor, verumque fidesque,
- In quorum subiere locum, fraudesque, dolusque.
- Insidiaeque, et ars, et amor sceleratus habendi,
- Uiuitur ex rapto, non hospes ab hospite tutus,
- Non socer a genero, fratrum quoque gratia rara est,
- Imminet exitio vir, conjugis, illa mariti
- Liuida terribiles miscent aconitae nouercae
- Filius ante diem, patrios inquirit in annos,
- Uita iacet pietas, et virgo caede madentes.
- Ultima Cilestum, Terras Astrea reliquit._
-
-Par les quelles raisons on voit, que ces animaux sont en nous
-absolutoires, et doiuent estre mis hors de Cour et de Proces, a quoy on
-conclud.
-
-_Replique des Habitans_
-
-Le principal motif qu'on a rapporte pour la deffense de ces animaux, est
-qu'estans priues de l'vsage de la raison, ils ne sont sommis a aucunes
-Loix, ainsi que dit le Chapitre _cum mulier_ 1. 5. q. l. la _l. congruit
-in fin_. et la Loix suiuante. _ff. de off. Praesid. sensu enim carens non
-subjicitur rigori Iuris Ciuilis._ Toutesfois, on fera voir que telles Loys
-ne peuuet militer au fait qui se presente maintenant a juger, car on ne
-dispute pas de la punition d'vn delict commis; Mais on tasche d'empescher
-qu'ils n'en commettent par cy-apres, et partant ce qui ne seroit loisible
-a vn crime commis, et permis afin d'empescher _ne crimen committatur_.
-Cecy ce preuue par la Loy _congruit_ sus cite, ou il est dit qu'on ne peut
-pas punir vn furieux et insense du crime qu'il a commis pendant sa fureur,
-parce qu'il ne scait ce qu'il fait, toutesfois on le pourra renfermer et
-mettre dans des prisons, afin qu'il n'offence personne et pour faire voir
-combien cet Axiome est vray, ie me sers de l'authorite du Chapitre _omnis
-vtriusque sexus de poenitent. et remiss._ ou il est dit qu'on peut
-deceller ce qu'on a pris si on ne la pas execute, afin d'y rapporter du
-remede, cette proposition est confirmee par la glose _in cap. tua nos ext.
-de sponsal._ qui dit qui si quelqu'vn s'accuse d'auoir Fiance une fille,
-par parolles de present; on pourra deceller ce qui a este dit, afin que le
-Mariage se consume. La raison est, qu'ayant espouse telle fille, si on nie
-de l'auoir fait, et on refuse d'accomplir le Mariage, _Videtur esse
-delictum successiuum, et durare vsque illam acceperit, vt ergo tali
-delicto obuietur_. Il este loisible de publier ce qu'on a pris
-secretement Estant vray par les raisons deduites qu'on a peu adjourner,
-tels animaux, et que l'adjournement est valable, d'autant qu'il est fait
-afin qu'ils ne rapportent du dommage d'ores en auant, non pas pour les
-chastier de celuy qu'ils ont fait. Il reste maintenant de respondre a ce
-qu'on a aduance a scauoir que tels animaux ne peuuent estre Excommunies,
-Anathematises, maudis ny execres; a cela il semble que se serait doubter
-de la puissance que Dieu a donne a l'Eglise, l'ayant fait Maitresse de
-tout l'Vnivers, comme sa chere Espouse, de qui on peut dire, auec le
-Psalmiste, _omnia subiecisti sub pedibus ejus, oues, et boues et omnia quae
-mouentur in aquis_, et estant conduite par le S. Esprit, ne fait rien que
-sagement, et s'il y a chose ou elle doiue monstrer son pouuoir, c'est a la
-Conservation du plus parfait ouurage de son Espoux; a scauoir de l'Homme,
-qu'il a fait a son Image et semblance, _faciamus hominem, ad imaginem, et
-similitudinem nostram_ et luy a donne le Gouuernement de toutes les choses
-crees _crescite et multiplicamini et dominamini piscibus maris,
-volatilibus coeli, et omnibus animantibus Coeli_; Aussi Pline en son Liure
-premier de l'Histoire naturelle dit _quod causa hominis, videtur cuncta
-alia genuisse natura_. Les Jurisconsultes sont d'accord, _quod hominis
-gratia, omnes fructus a natura comparati sunt, l. pecudum. ff. de vsur. et
-Sec.. partus ancillarum. instit. de rer. diuis._ et Ouide descriuant
-l'excellence de l'Homme parle de la sorte,
-
- _Pronaque, cum spectent animalia caeetera terras
- Os homini sublime dedit, caelumque tueri
- Iussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus._
-
-et vn autre Poete,
-
- _Nonne vides hominem, vt Celsos ad sidera vultus
- Sustulerit Deus, ac sublimia finxerit ora.
- Cum pecudes, volucrumque genus, formasque ferarum,
- Segnem, atque obscaenam, passuri strauisset in aluum._
-
-Picus Mirandulanus, en vne de ses Oraison parlant de la grandeur de
-l'Homme dit _hominem tantoe excellentiae, ac sublimitatis esse, vt in se
-omnia continere dicatur, vti Deus, sed diuersimode, Deus enim omnia in se
-continet, vti omnium medium principium, homo vero, in se omnia continet,
-vti omnium medium, quo fit, vt in Deo sint omnia meliore nota, quam in
-seipsis, in homine inferiora nobiliori sint conditione, superiora autem
-degenerent sicut aer, ignis, aqua et terra per verissimam proprietatem
-naturoe suoe, in crasso hoc, et terreno, hominis corpore, quo nos videmus,
-hinc etenim nulla creata substantia seruire dedignatur, hinc Terra, et
-Elementa, huic bruta praeesto sunt, famulantur, hinc militat caelum, hinc
-salutem bonumque procurant Angelicoe mentes_.
-
-Et se seroit vne chose, si j'ose dire hors de raison, que celuy pour qui
-la terre produit tous ces fruits, en fut priue, et que de chetifs animaux,
-prissent leur norriture, a l'exclusion de l'Homme pour qui ils sont
-destines de Dieu. C'est sur ce sujet qu'il dit _Increpabo pro te locustas
-dummodo posueris de fructibus tuis in horrea mea_.
-
-Et pour responce a ce qu'escrit S. Thomas qu'il n'est loisible de maudire
-tels animaux, si on les considere en eux mesmes, on dit qu'en l'espece
-qu'on traitte, on ne les considere pas, comme animaux simplement: mais
-comme apportans du mal aux Hommes, mangeans et detruisans les fruits qui
-seruent a son soutient, et nourriture.
-
-Mais a quoy, nous arrestons-nous depuis qu'on voit par des exemples
-infinis que quantite de saints Personnages, ont Excommunie des animaux
-apportans du dommage aux Hommes. Il suffira d'en rapporter vn pour tout,
-qui nous est cogneu, et familier, que nous voyons continuellement, a
-scauoir dans la ville d'Aix, ou S. Hugon Euesque de Grenoble Excommuniat
-les serpens, qui y estaient en quantite a cause des bains chauds de
-souffre, et d'Alun, qui faisaient vn grand dommage aux Habitans de ce lieu
-par leur piqueures. De sorte que maintenant si bien les Serpens piquent,
-quelqu'vn dans le lieu, et confins: Telle piqueure ne fait aucun mal, le
-venin de ces bestes estant arreste, par le moyen de telle Excommunication,
-que si quelqu'vn est pique hors de ce lieu par les mesmes Serpens, la
-piqueure sera venimeuse et mortelle ainsi qu'on a veu par plusieurs fois.
-Ie laisse a part quantite de passages de l'Escripture par lesquels on voit
-que Dieu a donne des maledictions aux choses inanimees, et Creatures sans
-raison, ainsi qu'on pourra voir au _Leuitic. Ch. 26. et Deutheronome 27.
-Genes. 2._ il maudit le Serpent _Maledictus es, inter omnia animantia, et
-bestias Terrae_.
-
-De dire, qu'excommuniant, Anathematisant tels animaux, s'est s'en prendre
-a Dieu, qui les a enuoye pour le chastiment des hommes. A cela on respond
-que ce n'est pas s'ens prendre a Dieu que de recourir a l'Eglise, et la
-prier de diuertir, et chasser le mal, qu'il a pleu a sa Diuine Majeste de
-nous enuoyer, a cause de nos fautes et peches; au contraire c'est vn acte
-de Religion que de recourir a elle, lors q'on voit que Dieu leue sa main
-pour nous frapper.
-
-_Conclusion du Procureur Episcopal_
-
-Les defenses rapportees par l'Aduocat de ces animaux, contre les
-Conclusions prises par les Habitans sont considerables qui meritent qu'on
-les examine meurement; car il ne faut pas ietter le carreau
-d'Excommunication a la volee, et sans sujet, estant vn foudre qui est si
-agissant, que s'il ne frappe celuy contre lequel on le jette, il embrase
-celuy qui le lance. Le discours de cet Aduocat est appuye sur la regle de
-Droict, qui dit, _qui iussu iudicis aliquid facit, poenam non meretur_, et
-vrayement c'est le Iuge des Iuges, qui ne laisse rien d'impuny, et qui
-distribue les peines a l'egal des offences, sans auoir egard a personne,
-de qui les jugemens nous sont incognus, _quam abscondita iudicia Dei,
-inuestigabiles viae ejus_. C'est vne Mer profonde d'ont on ne peut
-decouurir le fonds. De dire pourquoy il a enuoye ces animaux, qui mangent
-les fruits de la terre: Ce nous sont lettres closes; peut estre veut-il
-punir ce Peuple, pour auoir fait la sourde oreille aux pauures qui
-demandoient a leurs portes, estant vn Arrest infaillible, que qui fait aux
-pauures la sourde oreille, attende de Dieu la pareille.
-
-Ceux qui donnent l'aumosne sont toujours sous la protection Diuine, aussi
-S. Gierosme dit _non memini me legisse mala morte mortuum, qui libenter
-opera charitatis exercuit, habet enim multos intercessores, et impossibile
-est, multorum preces non exaudiri_, et S. Ambrojse parlant de ceux qui
-donnent l'aumone aux pauures, _si non pauisti necasti, pascendo seruare
-poteras_, de mesmes la Loy _de lib. agnoscend._ repute pour homicide celuy
-qui denie, et refuse les alimens a ceux qui en ont besoin, et le Prophete
-Ezechiel, c. 18. parlant de la recompense, que Dieu a destinee a ceux qui
-font du bien aux pauures, _qui panem suum esurienti dederit et nudum
-operuerit vestimento, justus est, et vita viuet_; Lesquelles paroles
-Eusebe expliche de la sorte, _fregisti esurienti panem tuum, in Coelo
-vitae pane qui Christus est satiaberis, hic peregrinis domus tua patuit,
-in domo Angelorum, Ciuis efficieris tu hic trementia membra destijsti,
-illic liberaberis ab illo frigore, in quo erit fletus, et stridor
-dentium_.
-
-C'est vn acte de Charite, que d'assister le pauures, _frange esurienti
-panem tuum et egenos, vagosque indue in domum tuam, cum videris nudum,
-operi eum, et carnem tuam ne despexeri_, dit Iosue c. 38. aussi la
-recompense est asseuree, ainsi qu'escrit S. Mathieu cap. 25. _venite
-Benedicti patris mei, possidete paratum vobis regnum a constitutione
-mundi; esuriui enim, et dedistis mihi manducare; sitiui, et dedistis mihi
-bibere; hospes eram et Collegistis me; nudus eram, et operuistis me, amen
-dico vobis quod vni fecistis ex fratribus meis minimis, mihi fecistis_.
-C'est vne oeuure de Misericorde d'auuoir compassion de son prochain, ainsi
-que dit S. Ambroise _lib. 2. off. cap. 28. hoc maximum Misericordiae, vt
-compatiamur alienis calamitatibus necessitates aliorum, quantum possumus
-iuvemus, et plus interdum quam possumus_ l'Hospitalite est recommandee par
-S. Paul _hospitalitatem nolite obliuisci, per hanc enim placuerunt quidam,
-Angelis hospitio receptis_, et S. Augustin _disce Christiane sine
-discretione exhibere hospitalitatem, ne forte cui domum clauseris, cui
-humanitatem negaueris ipse sit Christus_. L'ordinaire recompence qui suit
-l'aumosne est le centuple, _honora Dominum de tua substantia, et de
-primitiis omnium fructuorum tuorum de pauperibus, et implebuntur horrea
-tua saturitate et vino torcularia tua redundabunt_. Les abismes de la
-Diuinite ne s'epuisent jamais, pour donner, et le sage Salomon, _faeneratur
-Domino qui miseretur pauperi, et vicissitudinem suam reddet_. S. Paul aux
-Corinthiens Chap. 2. parle de la sorte, _qui administrat semen seminanti,
-et panem ad manducandum praestabit, et multiplicabit semen suum_.
-
-Seroit-ce point a cause des irreuerences qu'on commet aux Eglises pendant
-le service Diuin, ou sans aucun egard a la presence de Dieu, _conduntur
-stupra, tractantur lenocinia, adulteria meditantur, frequentius denique;
-in aedituorum cellulis quod in ipsis lupanaribus flagrans libido
-defungitur_, pour parler auec Tertullien; car c'est la bien souuent ou se
-donne le mot, ou se prennent les assignations, ou se lancent les
-meschantes oeilliades, _Impudicus oculus, impudici cordis est nuncius_,
-dit S. Augustin. Sur tous les arbres et plantes, qui estaient en AEgypte,
-le peche etait consacre a Harpocrates qui prenait soin du langage qu'on
-deuait tenir aux Dieux, parce que le fruit du peche ressemble au coeur, et
-la feuille a la langue, inferant de la que ceux qui allaient aux Temples,
-deuoient penser saintement honestement, et sombrement parler.
-
-Numa Pompilius ne volut pas qu'on assistat au culte Diuin par maniere
-d'aquit: Mais qu'en quittant toutes choses, on y employat entierement sa
-pensee, comme au principal acte de la Religion, et d'actions enuers les
-Dieux, ne voulant pas mesme pendant le Seruice, qu'on entendit parmy les
-Rues aucun bruit, et lors que les Prestres faisoient le Sacrifices et
-ceremonies, il y auoit des Sergens qui crioent au Peuple que l'on se tue,
-laissant toute autre oeuvre pour estre attentif au Culte.
-
-Que si les Payens ont este si exats en leur fausse Religion au Culte de
-leurs Idoles, et imaginaires Diuinites, nous qui sommes Chrestiens, et
-auons la conoissance du vray Dieu; quel respect ne luy deuons-nous pas
-porter dans les Eglises, pendant le S. Sacrifice de la Messe et autres
-Offices Diuins.
-
-Mais si bien Dieu est Iuste iusticier, qui ne laisse rien impuni
-toutesfois la Iustice ne tient pas si fort le haut bout, que la
-misericorde, n'y treuue place. Il est autant Misericordieux que Iuste, et
-s'il enuoit quelques aduersites aux pecheurs et les visite par quelque
-coup de fouet: C'est pour les aduertir de faire penitence, par le moyen
-de laquelle ils puissent detourner son courroux, et iuste vengeance, et
-par ce moyen, ils se puissent reconcilier auec luy, et obtenir ses graces,
-et pardon de leurs fautes et peches.
-
-Nous voyons ces habitans la larme a l'oeil, qui demandent pardon d'vn
-coeur contrit de leurs fautes, ayans horreur des crimes commis par le
-passe, et employent l'assistance de l'Eglise pour les soulager en leurs
-necessites, et detourner le Carreau qui leur pend sur la teste, estans
-menaces d'vne famine insuportable si vous ne prenes leur droit, et cause
-en protection, et faire deloger ces animaux, qui les menacent d'vne ruine
-totale, a quoy nous n'empeschons.
-
-Concluans a cet effect, qu'il plaise de rendre vostre Sentence d'execution
-contre ces animaux, afin que d'ores en auant ils n'apportent du dommage
-aux fruits de la terre enjoignans aux Habitans, les Penitences, et
-Oraisons, a ce conuenables et accoustumees.
-
-_La Sentence du Iuge d'Eglise_
-
-In nomine Domini amen, visa supplicatione pro parte habitantium loci,
-nobis officiali in iudicio facta, aduersus Bronchos, seu Erucas, vel alia
-non dissimilia animalia fructus vinearum eiusdem loci a certis annis, et
-adhuc hoc praesenti anno, vt fide dignorum Testimonio, et quasi publico
-Rumore asseritur, cum maximo incolarum loci, et vicinorum locorum
-incommodo depopulantia, vt praedicta animalia per nos moneantur, et
-remediis Ecclesiasticis mediantibus compellantur, a territorio dicti loci
-abire, visisque diligenter, inspectis causis praedictae supplicationis,
-necnon pro parte, dictarum Erucarum, seu animalium, per certos
-Conciliarios eosdem, per nos deputatos, propositis et allegatis, audito
-etiam super praemissis promotore, ac visa certa informatione, et
-ordinatione nostra, per certum dictae Curiae, Notarium, de damno in
-vineis, iam dicti loci, per animalia illato. Quoniam, nisi eiusmodi damno,
-nisi diuina ope succurri posse existimatur attenta praedictorum
-habitantium, humili, ac frequenti, et importuna requisitione praesertim
-magnae pristinae vitae errata emendandi per eosdem habitantes, edicto
-spectaculo, solemniter supplicationum nuper ex nostra ordinatione,
-factarum prompta exhibitione, et sicut Misericordia Dei, peccatores ad se
-cum humilitate reuertentes non respuit, ita ipsius Ecclesia eisdem
-recurrentibus, auxilium seu etiam solatium qualecunque denegare non debet.
-
-Non praedictus, in re quamquam noua, tam fortiter tamen efflagitata
-Maiorum vestigiis inhaerendo, pro tribunali, sedentes, ac Deum prae oculis
-habentes, in eius Misericordia, ac pietate confidentes, de peritorum
-consilio, nostram sententiam modo quae sequitur, in his scriptis ferimus.
-
-In nomine, et virtute Dei, Omnipotentis, Patris, et Filij, et Spiritus
-sancti, Beatissimae Domini nostri Jesu Christi Genetricis Mariae,
-Authoritateque Beatorum Apostolorum, Petri et Pauli, necnon ea qua
-fungimur in hac parte, praedictos Bronchos, et Erucas, et animalia
-praedicta quocunque nomine censeantur, monemus in his scriptis, sub poenis
-Maledictionis, ac Anathematisationis, vt infra sex dies, a Monitione in
-vim sententiae huius, a vineis, et territoriis huius loci discedant,
-nullum vlterius ibidem, nec alibi documentum, praestitura, quod si infra
-praedictos dies, iam dicta animalia, huic nostrae admonitioni non
-paruerint, cum effectu. Ipsis sex diebus elapsis, virtute et auctoritate
-praefatis, illa in his scriptis Anathematizamus, et maledicimus,
-Ordinantes tamen, et districte praecipientes, praedictis habitantibus,
-cuiuscumque gradus, ordinis, aut conditionis existant, vt facilius ab
-Omnipotente Deo, omnium bonorum largitore, et malorum depulsore, tanti
-incommodi liberationem, valeant promereri, quatenus bonis operibus, ac
-deuotis supplicationibus, iugiter attendentes, de caetero suas decimas,
-sine fraude secundum loci approbatam consuetudinem persoluant,
-blasphemiis, et aliis peccatis, praesertim publicis sedulo abstineant.
-
-
-C
-
-Allegation, replication, and judgment in the process against field-mice at
-Stelvio in 1519.
-
-KLAG
-
-Schwarz Mining hat sein Klag gesetzt wider die Lutmaeuse in der Gestalt,
-dass diese schaedliche Tiere ihnen grossen merklichen Schaden tun, so wurde
-auch erfolgen, wenn diese schaedliche Tiere nit weggeschaft werden, dass
-sie ire Jarszinse der Grundherrschaft nit nur geben koennten und verursacht
-wurden hinweg zu ziehen, weil sie solcher Gestalten sich nit wuessten zu
-ernehren.
-
-ANTWORT
-
-Darauf Grienebner eingedingt, und diese Antwort geben und sein Procurey
-ins Recht gelegt: er hab diese wider die Tierlein verstanden; es sey aber
-maenniglich bewusst, dass sie allda in gewisser Gewoehr und Nutzen sitzen,
-darum aufzulegen sei----: Derentwegen er in Hoffnung stehe, man werde
-ihnen auf heutigen Tage die Nutz und Gewoehr mit keinem Urtel nehmen oder
-aberkennen. Im Fall aber ein Urtel erging, dass sie darum weichen muessten,
-so sey er doch in Hoffnung, dass ihnen ein anders Ort und Statt geben soll
-werden, uf dass sie sich erhalten moegen: es soll ihnen auch bei solchem
-Abzug ein frei sicher Geleit vor iren Feinden erteilt, es seyn Hund
-Katzen oder andre ihre Feind: er sey auch in Hoffnung, wenn aine schwanger
-waere, dass derselben Ziel und Tag geben werde, dass ir Frucht fuerbringen
-und alsdann auch damit abziehen moege.
-
-URTEL
-
-Auf Klag und Antwort, Red und Widerred, und uf eingelegte Kundschaften und
-Alles was fuer Recht kommen, ist mit Urtel und Recht erkennt, dass die
-schaedlichen Tierlein, so man nennt die Lutmaeuse, denen von Stilfs in Acker
-und Wiesmaeder nach Laut der Klag in vierzehn Tagen raumen sollen, da
-hinweg ziehen und zu ewigen Zeiten dahin nimmer mehr kommen sollen; wo
-aber ains oder mehr der Tierlein schwanger waer, oder jugendhalber nit
-hinkommen moechte, dieselben sollen der Zeit von jedermann ain frey
-sicheres Geleit haben 14 Tage lang; aber die so ziehen moegen, sollen in 14
-Tagen wandern.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch fuer die vaterlaendische Geschichte_. Berlin,
-1845, pp. 239-40.
-
-
-D
-
-Admonition, denunciation, and citation of the inger by the priest Bernhard
-Schmid in the name and by the authority of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478.
-
-Du vnvernuenfftige/ vnvollkommne Creatur/ mit nammen Inger/ vnd nenne dich
-darumb vnvollkommen/ dann deines geschlechts ist nit geseyn in der Arch
-Noe/ in der Zeit der vergifftung vnd plag des Wassergusses. Nun hast du
-mit deinem anhang grossen schaden gethan im Erdtrich vnd auff dem Erdtrich
-ein mercklichen abbruch zeitlicher nahrung der Menschen vnd vnvernuefftigen
-thiere. Vnd von des nun/ soemlicher und dergleichen/ durch euch vnd euweren
-anhang nit mehr beshaech/ so hat mir mein gnaediger Herr vnd Bischoff zu
-Losann gebotten in seinem nammen/ euch zeermannen/ zeweichen vnd
-abzestahn. Vnd also von seiner Gnaden gebotts wegen vnd auch in seinem
-nammen als obstaht/ vnd bey krafft der heiligen hochgelobten
-Dreyfaltigkeit/ vnd durch krafft vnd verdienen des Menschen-geschlechts
-Erloesers/ vnsers behalters Jesu Christi/ vnd bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit
-der heiligen Kirchen gebieten vnd ermannen ich euch in 6. naechsten tagen
-zeweichen/ all vnd jegliche besonders/ auss allen Matten/ Ackeren/ Gaerten/
-Feldern/ Weiden/ Baeumen/ Krueteren/ vnd von allen oerteren/ an denen
-wachsend vnd entspringend nahrungen der Menschen vnd der Thieren/vndan
-dieort vnd staetteuch fuegend/ dass ihr mit ewerem anhang nimmer kein
-schaden vollbringen moegen an den fruechten vnd nahrungen der Menschen vnd
-Thieren/ heimlich noch offentlich. Were aber sach/ dass ihr dieser
-ermannungen vnd gebott nit nachgiengend/ oder nachfolgeten/ vnd meinten
-vrsach haben/ das nit zeerfuellen/ so ermannen ich euch alsvor/ vnd laden
-vnd citieren euch bey krafft vnd gehorsamkeit der heiligen Kirchen am 6.
-tag nach diser execution/ so es eins schlecht/ nach mitten tag/ gen
-Wifflispurg/ euch zu verantworten/ oder durch eweren Fuersprechen antwort
-zu geben/ vor meinem gnaedigen Herren von Losann/ oder seinem Vicario vnd
-statthaltern/ vnd wird drauff mein gnaediger Herr von Losann oder sein
-statthalter fuerer/ nach ordnungen des rechten/ wider euch/ mit verfluechen
-vnd beschweerungen/ handeln/ alss sich dann in solchem gebuert/ nach form
-vnd gestalt des rechten. Lieben Kind/ ich begaeren von ewerem jeglichen zu
-baetten mit andacht auff ewerem knyen 3 Paternoster vnd Ave Maria, der
-hochen heiligen Dreyfaltigkeit zu lob vnd ehr anzerueffen vnd zebitten ihr
-gnad vnd hilff zesenden/ damit die Inger vertriben werdind.
-
-Job. Heinrich Hottinger: _Historia ecclesiastica novi testamenti_ iv. pp.
-317-321, on the authority of Schilling's _Chronica_, the manuscript of
-which is in the Zurich library.
-
-
-E
-
-Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector, commending the action of
-Parson Greysser in putting the sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in
-1559.
-
-Von Gottes Gnaden Augustus, Herzog zu Sachsen und Kurfuerst.--Lieber
-Getsener, welchergestalt und aus was Ursachen und christlichem Eifer, der
-wuerdige, Unser lieber andaechtiger Hr. Daniel Greysser, Pfarrherr allhier
-in seiner naechst getanen Predigt, ueber die Sperlinge etwas heftig bewegt
-gewesen und dieselbe wegen ihres unaufhoerlichen verdriesslichen grossen
-Geschreis und aergerlichen Unkeuschheit, so sie unter der Predigt, zu
-Verhinterung Gottes Worts und christlicher Andact, zu tun und behegen
-pflegen, in den Bann getan, und maenniglich preis gegeben, dessen wirst du
-dich als der damals ohne Zweifel aus Anregung des heiligen Geistes im
-Tempel zur Predigt gewesen, guter massen zu erinnern wissen.
-
-Wiewohl Wir uns nun vorsehen, du werdest, auf gedachten Herrn Daniels
-Vermahnen und Bitten, so er an alle Zuhoerer insgemein getan, ohne das
-allbereit auf Wege gedacht haben; sintemal Wir diesen Bericht erlangt,
-dass du dem kleinen Gevoegel vor andern durch mancherlei visirliche und
-listige Wege und Griffe nachzustellen, auch deine Nahrung unter andern
-damit zu suchen und dasselbe zu fahen pflegest,--dass ihnen ihrem
-Verdienst nach gelohnt werden moege nach weiland des Herrn Martini seligen
-Urtheil--ist demnach unser gnaediges Begehren--zu eroeffnen, wie und
-welchergestalt auch durch was Behaendigkeit und Wege, du fuer gut ansehest,
-dass die Sperlinge eher dann, wann sie jungen, und sich durch ihre
-taegliche und unaufhoerliche Unkeuschheit unzaehlich vermehren, ohne
-sonderliche Kosten aus der Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz gebracht, und solche
-aergerliche Voeglerei und hinterlicher Getzschirpe und Geschrei im Hause
-Gottes, verkuemmert werden moege.... Das gereicht zur Befoerderung guter
-Kirchenzucht und geschieht daran unsere gnaedige Meinung. Datum Dresden,
-den. 18. Februar 1559.--Unserm Secretario und lieben getreuen Thomas
-Nebeln.
-
-_Vide_ Hormayr's _Taschenbuch, etc._, 1845, pp. 227-8.
-
-
-F
-
-Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions of Animals from
-the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century.[5]
-
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Sources of Information | Dates | Animals | Places
- ----------------------------+-------+-------------+---------------------
- Annales Ecclesiastici | 824 |Moles |Valley of Aosta
- Francorum | | |
- | | |
- Muratori: Rer. Ital. | 886 |Locusts |Roman Campagna
- Scriptores, iii | | |
- | | |
- Gaspard Bailly: | 9th |Serpents |Aix-les-Bains
- Traite des Monitoires | cent. | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres, iv, | 1120 |Field-mice |Laon
- p. 97, Memoires de la | |and |
- Societe Royale des | |Caterpillars |
- Antiquaires de France, | | |
- viii, p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Theophile Raynaud: De | 1121 |Flies |Foigny near Laon
- Monitoriis in Opusc. | | |
- missc. ejus, xiv, p. 482. | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 415. Note, Vita S. | | |
- Bernhardi, i, No. 58. | 1121 |Horseflies |Mayence
- Acta., SS. Aug. iv, p. 272| | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1225 |Eels |Lausanne
- | | |
- L'Abbe Leboeuf: Hist. de | 1266 |Pig |Fontenay-aux-Roses
- Paris, ix, p. 400. | | | near Paris
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Sainte-Foix: Oeuvres | 1314 |Bull |Moiey-le-Temple
- Themis, viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1320 |Cockchafers |Avignon
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1322 | |Not Specified
- _vide_ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1323 | |Abbeville
- Both cited by Von Amira, | | |
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Zeitschrift fuer deutsche | 1338 | |Kaltern
- Kulturgeschichte, ii, p. | | |
- 544; also Germania, iv, | | |
- p. 383. Von Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Delisle: Etudes sur la | 1356 |Pig |Caen
- condition de la classe | | |
- agricole, p. 107. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange. | 1378 | |Abbeville
- _Vide_ homicida. Von | | |
- Amira, p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Societes | 1379 |Three sows |Saint-Marcel
- Savantes, Dec. 1866, pp. | |and a pig. | les-Jussey
- 476, _sqq._ From the | |Rest of the |
- archives of Cote-d'Or | |two herds |
- | | pardoned |
- | | |
- Charange: Dict. des Titres | 1386 |Sow |Falaise
- Originaux, ii, p. 72. | | |
- _Also_ statistique de | | |
- Falaise, i, p. 63. | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1389 |Horse |Dijon
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1394 |Pig |Mortaing
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 427. From MSS. in la | | |
- Bibliotheque du Roi | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 14th |Spanish flies|Mayence
- Tract. ii, Memoires, | cent. | |
- cit., viii, p. 411 | | |
- | | |
- MS. of Judge Herisson, | 1403 |Sow |Meulan
- published by Lejeune in | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | | |
- 433; _also_ Loriol: | | |
- La France Eure et Loire, | | |
- p. 108 | | |
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1404 |Pig |Rouvre
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliotheque du Roi | 1405 |Ox |Gisors
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 427 | | |
- | | |
- MS. Bibliotheque du Roi | 1408 |Pig |Pont-de-l'Arche
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- Louandre: Histoire | 1414 | " |Abbeville
- d'Abbeville | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1418 | " | "
- | | |
- Auranton: Annuaire de la | 1419 | " |Labergement-le-Duc
- Cote-d'Or | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1420 | " |Brochon
- | | |
- " " " | 1435 | " |Trocheres
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis, | 1451 |Rats and |Berne
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | Bloodsuckers|
- p. 423 | | |
- | | |
- Garnier: Revue des Societes | 1452 |Sixteen cows |Rouvre
- Savantes, iv, p. 476 | | and one goat|
- _sqq._ Dec. 1866 | | |
- | | |
- Gui-Pape: Decisiones | 1456 |Pig |Bourgogne
- Themis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, pp. | 1457 |Sow |Savigny-sur-Etang,
- 441-445. From Archives of | | | Bourgogne
- Monjeu and Dependencies | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches etc. | 1460-1|Weevils |Dijon
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Justice et | 1463 |Two pigs |Amiens
- Bourreau a Amiens | | |
- | | |
- Sauval: Histoire de Paris, | 1466 |Sow |Corbeil
- iii, p. 387. Memoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428 | | |
- | | |
- A. Duboys: Histoire de Paris| 1470 |Mare |Amiens
- | | |
- Promenades pittoresques dans| 1474 |Cock |Bale
- l'Eveche de Bale. Journal | | |
- du Department du Nord, | | |
- Nov. 1, 1813. Memoires, | | |
- cit., viii, p. 428. Johann| | |
- Gross: Kleine Baseler | | |
- Chronik. | | |
- | | |
- Schilling: Chronica (Zurich | 1478 |Inger (sort |Berne
- MS.), Hottinger: Hist. | | of weevil) |
- Eccles. Pars iv, pp. | | |
- 317-321 | | |
- | | |
- Ruchat: Hist. Eccles. du |1479[6]|Inger | "
- Pays de Vaud | | |
- | | |
- Hist. de Nismes. Memoires, | 1479 |Rats and |Nimes
- cit., viii, p. 428. | | Moles |
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1479 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia von | 1481 |Caterpillars |Macon
- Amira, p. 561 | | |
- | | |
- Victor Hugo: Notre Dame de | 1482 |Goat |Paris
- Paris | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | 1487 |Snails |Macon
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 416 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 | " |Autun
- | | |
- " " " | 1488 |Weevils |Beaujeu
- | | |
- Louandre: Hist. d'Abbeville | 1490 |Pig |Abbeville
- | | |
- Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812, | 1494 |Pig |Clermont-les-Moncornet
- p. 88. Memoires, cit., | | | near Laon
- viii, p. 428, 446 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la | 1497 |Sow |Charonne
- Penalite, sub verb. | | |
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Voyage Litteraire de deux | 1499 |Bull |Beauvais
- Benedictins (Durand et | | |
- Martenne), 1717, ii, | | |
- p. 166-7 | | |
- | | |
- Archives de l'Abbaye de | 1499 |Pig |Seves near Chartres
- Josaphat. Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 434-5 | | |
- | | |
- Memoires, cit., viii, p. | 15th |Sow |Dunois
- 434 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | " |Caterpillars |Coire
- | | |
- " " " | " |Worms |Constance
- | | |
- " " " | " |Beetles |Coire
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | 1500 |Flies |Mayence
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500 |Snails |Lyon
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia | 1500- |Vermin |Autun
- | 1530 | (Rats, etc.)|
- | | |
- Memoires et Documents, publ.| 1509 |Vermin |Lausanne
- par la Soc. de la Suisse | | |
- Romande, vii, No. 97, pp. | | |
- 675-677 | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or | 1510 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or. | 1512 | " |Arcenaux
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 447 | | |
- | | |
- Mathieu: Hist. des Eveques |1512-13|Rats and |Langres
- de Langres, p. 188 | | Insects |
- | | |
- Groslee: Ephemerides, 1811, | 1516 |Weevils |Troyes in Champagne
- ii, p. 153, 168. _Cf._ |(1506 | |
- Theophile Raynaud: Opusc, | according |
- 1665, p. 482. Memoires, | to some |
- cit., viii, p. 413, 418, | authorities) |
- 424 | | |
- | | |
- Habasque: Not. hist. sur le | 1516 |Locusts |Treguier
- Litoral des Cotes-du-Nord,| | |
- p. 89 | | |
- | | |
- Scheible: Das Kloster, xii, | 1519 |Field-mice |Glurns (Stelvio)
- pp. 946-48 | | |
- | | |
- Saint-Edme: Dict. de la |1522[7]|Rats |Autun
- Penalite. _Cf._ Chasseneus| | |
- | | |
- Vernet in Themis ou | 1525 |Dog |Parliament of
- Bibliotheque des | | | Toulouse
- Jurisconsulte, viii | | |
- | | |
- Papon and Boesius: | 1528 |Not specified|Parliament of
- Decisiones. _Cf._ Themis, | | | Bordeaux
- viii | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1528 | " | " "
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1536 |Weevils |Lutry (on Lake
- contre les Animaux, p. | | | Leman)
- 505. From Grenier: | | |
- Documents relatifs a | | |
- l'hist. du pays de Vaud. | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1540 |Bitch |Meaux
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Annuaire de la Cote-d'Or | 1540 |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1541 |She-Ass |Loudun
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Bailly: Traite des | 1541 |Grasshoppers |Lombardy
- Monitoires, ii | | |
- | | |
- Malleolus: De Exorcismis | 1541 |Vermin |Lausanne
- | |(worms, rats,|
- | |bloodsuckers)|
- | | |
- Berriat-Saint-Prix in | 1543 |Snails and |Grenoble
- Themis, i, p. 196 | | Locusts |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1545 |Weevils |St. Jean de
- contre les Animaux, pp. | and | | Maurienne
- 544, 545, 556. De Actis | 1546 | |
- Scindicorum com. St. | | |
- Jul., etc. | | |
- | | |
- Dulaure: Hist. de Paris, | 1546 |Cow |Parliament of
- iii, p. 28, Registres | | | Paris
- manuscrits de la | | |
- Tournelle. _Cf._ Memoires,| | |
- cit., viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1550 | " | " "
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1551 |Goat |Ile de Rhe
- | | |
- " " " | 1554 |Sheep (ewe) |Beauge
- | | |
- Aldrovande: De Insectis, | 1554 |Bloodsuckers |Lausanne
- 1602, lib. vii, 724. | | |
- Memoires, cit. viii, | | |
- p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyer, cited in Revue des| 1554 |Insects |Langres
- questions historiques, v, | | |
- p. 278. Von Armira, p. 567| | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1556 |She-Ass |Sens
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lecoq: Hist. de la Ville de | 1557 |Pig |Saint-Quintin
- Saint-Quintin, p. 143. | | |
- Sorel: Proces contre des | | |
- animaux, etc., p. 9 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1560 |She-Ass |Loigny near
- manuscrit | | | Chateaudun
- | | |
- " " " | 1561 |Cow |Augoudessus in
- | | | Picardy
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del | 1562 |Weevils |Argenteuil
- Vino. Regist. Epir. Par. | | |
- for May 8 | | |
- | | |
- Ranchin on Gui. Pape | 1565 |Mule |Montpellier
- Quaest., 74. Themis, i, | | |
- p. 196. Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 429 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Themis, | 1565 |Not specified|Parliament of
- viii | | | Toulouse
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | 1566 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- Animaux | | | Paris
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliotheque | 1567 |Sow |Senlis
- Nationale of Paris | | |
- | | |
- Lionnois: Hist. de Nancy, | 1572 |Pig |Moyen-Montier,
- 1811, ii, p. 374 | | | near Nancy
- | | |
- Lersner: Chronica, 1706, | 1574 | " |Frankfort-on-the-Main
- p. 552 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones Themis, | 1575 |She-Ass |Parliament of
- viii | | | Paris
- | | |
- Haus-Chronik von | 1576 |Pig |Schweinfurt
- Schweinfurt, in | | |
- Zeitschrift fuer deutsche | | |
- Kulturgeschichte, i, 156 | | |
- | | |
- Cannaert: Bydragen tot de | 1578 |Pig(?) |Ghent
- Kennis van het oude | | |
- strafrecht in Vlandern, | | |
- 1835, p. vii | | |
- | | |
- Derheims: Hist. de | 1585 |Pig |Saint-Omer
- Saint-Omer, p. 327 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist. du Dauphine. | " |Locusts |Valence
- _Cf._ Themis, i, p. 196 | | |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements rendus | 1587 |Weevils |St. Jean-de-Maurienne
- contre les animaux, etc., | | |
- pp. 546, 549 | | |
- | | |
- Fornery and Laincel | 1596 |Dolphins |Marseilles
- | | |
- Theophile Raynaud: De | 16th |Weevils and |Cotentin
- Monitoriis, p. 482. | cent. | Grasshoppers|
- Memoires, cit., viii, |(first | |
- p. 429 | half) | |
- | | |
- Chasseneus: Consilia. | " |Snails |Lyons
- Memoires, cit., viii, | | |
- p. 415 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Weevils |Macon
- | | |
- " " " | " |Pig |Dijon
- | | |
- Louandre: L'Epopee des | " |Dog |Scotland
- Animaux | | |
- | | |
- Duboys: Hist. du Droit | 16th |Weevils |Angers
- Crim. de la France | cent. | |
- | second| |
- | half | |
- | | |
- Azpilcueta Martinus Doctor | " |Rats |Spain
- Navarrus: Consilia seu | | |
- Responsa, 1602, ii, p. | | |
- 812. Memoires, cit., viii,| | |
- p. 419. Theoph. Raynaud, | | |
- cit., p. 482 | | |
- | | |
- Francesco Vivio: Decisiones,| 16th |Divers |Aquila in Italy
- No. 68. Cited by | cent. | animals |
- D'Addosio: Bestie Delinq.,| second| |
- p. 125 | half | |
- | | |
- Archives of Obwalden | " |Gadflies |Aargau
- | | |
- Leonardo Vairo: De Fascino. | " |Locusts |Naples
- _Cf._ D'Addosio, cit., | | |
- p. 115. | | |
- | | |
- Sardagna: L'uomo e le | " |Horse |Portugal
- Bestie. Cited by D'Addosio| | |
- | | |
- Mornacius to Du Cange, | 1600 | |Beauvais
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Cow |Thouars
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Abbeville
- | | |
- Lessona: I Nemici del Vino, | " |Weevils |Vercelli
- 1890, p. 141 | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Decisiones. Themis, | 1601 |Dog |Brie
- viii. Lerouge: Reg. | | |
- secret manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Provins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Papon: Recueil d'Arrets | 1601 |Not |Parliament of
- | | specified | Paris
- | | |
- Charma: Lecons de | 1604 |Ass |Parliament of
- Philosophie | | | Paris
- | | |
- Guerra: Diurnali | " | " |Naples
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Joinville
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1606 |Sheep |Riom
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |Chateaurenaud
- | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " |Mare |Coiffy near Langres
- | | |
- | | |
- Lejeune: Memoires, cit., | " |Bitch |Chartres
- viii, p. 418 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1607 |Mare |Boursant near
- manuscrit | | | d'Epernay
- | | |
- " " " | 1609 | " |Montmorency
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |Niederrad
- | | |
- Voltaire: Siecle de Louis | " |Cow |Parliament of
- XIV, ch. i. Louandre: | | | Paris
- Rev. des deux Mondes, | | |
- 1854, i, p. 334 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1610 |Horse |Paris
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1611 |Goat |Laval
- | | |
- " " " | " |Cow |St. Fergeux
- | | | near Rethel
- | | |
- " " " | 1613 |Sow |Montoiron near
- | | | Chatelleraut
- | | |
- " " " | 1614 |She-Ass |Le Mans
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, etc.,| 1616 |Rats and |Langres
- p. 13 | | insects |
- | | |
- Anzeige fuer Kunde der | 1621 |Cow |Machern near
- deutschen Vorzeit, 1880, | | | Leipsic
- col. 102 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1621 |Mare |La Rochelle
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1622 | " |Montpensier
- | | |
- " " " | 1623 |She-Ass |Bessay near Moulins
- | | |
- " " " | 1624 |Mule |Chefboutonne (Poitou)
- | | |
- Doepler: Theat. pen., ii, | 1631 |Mares and |Greifenberg
- p. 574 | | Cows |
- | | |
- Marchisio Michele: Gatte | 1633 |Weevils |Strambino
- ed. insetti nocivi, 1834, | | | (Ivrea)
- p. 63 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | " |Mare |Bellac
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Carpentier to Du Cange, | 1641 |Pig |Viroflay
- _s.v._ Homicida | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1647 |Mare |Parliament of
- manuscrit | | | Paris
- | | |
- " " " | 1650 | " |Fresnay near Chartres
- | | |
- Crollolanza: Storia del | 1659 |Caterpillars |Chiavenna
- Contado di Chiavenna, | | |
- p. 455 _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gazzetta | 1661 |Weevils |Turin
- Litteraria di Torino, | | |
- Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Cotton Mather: Magnalia | 1662 |Cow, two |New Haven, Conn.
- Christi Americana, Book | | Heifers, |
- vi. London, 1702 | | three Sheep,|
- | | and two Sows|
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1666 |Mare |Tours
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- " " " | " | " |St. P. Lemontiers
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1667 |She-Ass |Vaudes near
- manuscrit | | | Bar-sur-Seine
- | | |
- " " " | 1668 |Mare |Angers
- | | |
- Annales scientifiques de | 1670 |Locusts |Clermont
- l'Auvergne, Vol. vii, | | |
- p. 391 | | |
- | | |
- Doepler: Theatrum pen., ii, | 1676 |Mare and Cow |Silesia
- p. 5 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1678 | " |Beauge
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- Perrero: Gaz. Litter. di | " |Weevils |Turin
- Torius, Feb. 24, 1883 | | |
- | | |
- Brillon: Decisiones, i, | 1679 |Mare |Parliament
- p. 914. Memoires, cit., | | | d'Aix
- viii, p. 431. Boniface: | | |
- Traite des matieres | | |
- criminelles, 1785, p. 31 | | |
- | | |
- Chorier: Hist du Dauphine. | Before|Worms |Constance
- Themis, viii | 1680 | | and Coire
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1680 |Mare |Fourches near
- manuscrit | | | Provins
- | | |
- Heinrich Roch: Schlesische | 1681 |Mare |Wuenschelburg
- Chronik, p. 342. Doepler: | | | in Silesia
- Theat. pen., ii, p. 573 | | |
- _sqq._ | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1684 |Mare |Ottendorf
- | | |
- " " " | 1685 | " |Striga
- | | |
- Dulaure: Description des | 1690 |Locusts |Pont-de-Chateau
- principaux lieux de la | | | in Auvergne
- France, 1789, v, p. 493 | | |
- _sqq._ Memoires, cit., | | |
- viii, p. 412 | | |
- | | |
- Lerouge: Registre secret | 1692 |Mare |Moulins
- manuscrit | | |
- | | |
- La Hontan: Voyages, Let. xi,| End of|Turtledoves |Canada
- p. 79. Memoires, cit., | 17th | |
- viii, p. 431 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Meiners: Vergleichung des | " |He-Goat |Russia
- aeltern u, neuern | | banished |
- Russlands, p. 291. | | to Siberia |
- _Cf._ Amira, p. 573 | | |
- | | |
- Registres de la Paroise de | 1710 |Rats |Grignon
- Grignon | | |
- | | |
- Sorel: Proces contre des | 1710 |Vermin |Autun
- animaux, etc., p. 23 | | |
- | | |
- Rinds Herreds Kroenike and | 1711 | " |Als in Jutland
- other sources given by | | |
- Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Agnel: Curiosites | 1713 |Termites |Piedade no Maranhao
- judiciaires et | | | in Brazil
- historiques du moyen-age, | | |
- p. 46. _Cf._ Manoel | | |
- Bernardes: Nova Floresta | | |
- ou Sylva de varios | | |
- apophthegmas, etc. 5 tom. | | |
- Lisboa, 1706-47 | | |
- | | |
- MSS. of Bibliotheque | 1726 |Not specified|Paris
- Nationale of Paris, | | |
- No. 10,970. D'Addosio: | | |
- Best. Del., p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Menebrea: Jugements contre | 1731 |Insects |Thonon
- les animaux, p. 508 | | |
- | | |
- La Tradition, 1888, p. 363 | 1733 |Vermin |Buranton
- _sqq._ Amira, p. 564 | | |
- | | |
- Rousseaud de Lacombe: | 1741 |Cow |Poitou
- Traite des matieres crim. | | |
- D'Addosio: Best. Del., | | |
- p. 107 | | |
- | | |
- Ant. de Saint-Gervais: | 1750 |She-Ass |Vanvres
- Hist. des Animaux | | |
- | | |
- A Report of the Case of | 1771 |Dog |Chichester, England
- Farmer Carter's Dog. | | |
- Amira, p. 559 | | |
- | | |
- Comparon: Hist. du | 1793 | " |Paris
- Tribunal Revolutionnaire | | |
- de Paris. _Cf._ Sorel, | | |
- op. cit., p. 16 | | |
- | | |
- Filangieri: Scienza della | 18th |Dogs |Italy
- Legislazione | cent. | |
- | | |
- Det. Kong. Danske | | |
- Landhusholdnings-Selskabs | 1805-6|Vermin |Lyoe in Denmark
- Skrifter. Ny Saml. ii, 1, | | |
- 22. Amira, p. 565 | | |
- | | |
- Desnoyers: Recherches, | 1826 |Locusts |Clermont-Ferrand
- etc., p. 15 | | |
- | | |
- Gazette des Tribunaux, | 1845 |Dog |Paris
- Jan. 23, 1845 | | |
- | | |
- " " " | 1864 |Pig |Pleternica in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Krauss, quoted by Amira, | 1866 |Locusts |Pozega in
- p. 573 | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- " " " | " |Grasshoppers |Vidovici in
- | | | Slavonia
- | | |
- Desnoyer: Recherches, | 19th |Locusts |Catalonia
- etc., p. 15 | cent. | |
- | | |
- Allg. deutsche | | |
- Strafrechts-zeitung, | " |Cock |Leeds in England
- 1861, No. 2. Also Pertile:| | |
- Gli animali in giudizio | | |
- | | |
- Cretella: Gli Animali | " |Wolf |Calabria
- sotto processo in Fanfulla| | |
- 1891, No. 65. _Cf._ Amira,| | |
- p. 569 | | |
- | | |
- New York Herald and Echo | 1906 |Dog |Delemont in
- de Paris, May 4, 1906[8] | | | Switzerland
- ------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
-G
-
-Receipt dated Jan. 9, 1386, in which the hangman of Falaise acknowledges
-to have been paid by the Viscount of Falaise ten sous and ten deniers
-tournois for the execution of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous
-tournois for a new glove.
-
- Quittance originale du 9, janvier 1386, passee devant Guiot de
- Montfort, tabellion a Falaise, et donnee par le bourreau de cette
- ville de la somme de _dix sols et dix deniers tournois_ pour sa peine
- et salaire d'avoir traine, puis pendu a la justice de Falaise une
- truie de l'age de 3 ans ou environ, qui avoit mange le visage de
- l'enfant de Jonnet le Maux, qui etait au bers et avoit trois mois et
- environ, tellement que ledit enfant en mourut, et de _dix sols
- tournois pour un gant neuf_ quand le bourreau fit la dite execution;
- cette quittance est donne a Regnaud Rigault, vicomte de Falaise; le
- bourreau y declare qu'il se tient pour bien content des dites sommes,
- et qu'il en tient quitte le roy et ledit vicomte.
-
-Charange: _Dictionnaire des Titres Originaux_. Paris, 1764. Tome II. p.
-72. Also _Statistique de Falaise_, 1827. Tome I. p. 63.
-
-
-H
-
-Receipt, dated Sept. 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton, hangman,
-acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois from Thomas
-de Juvigney, viscount of Mortaing, for having hanged a pig which had
-killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces lettres verront ou orront, Jehan Lours, garde du
- scel des obligacions de la vicomte de Mortaing, salut, Sachent tous
- que par devant Bynet de l'Espiney, clerc tabellion jure ou siege dudit
- lieu de Mortaing, fut present mestre Jehan Micton, pendart,[9] en la
- viconte d'Avrenches, qui recognut et confessa avoir eu et repceu de
- homme sage et pourveu Thomas de Juvigney, viconte dudit lieu de
- Mortaing, c'est assavoir la somme de cinquante souls tournois pour sa
- paine et salaire d'estre venue d'Avrenches jusques a Mortaing, pour
- faire acomplir et pendre a la justice dudit lieu de Mortaing, un porc,
- lequel avait tue et meurdis un enfant en la paroisse de Roumaygne, en
- ladite viconte de Mortaing. Pour lequel fait ycelui porc fut condanney
- a estre trayne et pendu, par Jehan Pettit, lieutenant du bailli de _Co
- ... rin_, es assises dudit lieu de Mortaing, de laquelle somme dessus
- dicte le dit pendart se tint pour bien paie, et en quita le roy nostre
- sire, ledit viconte et tous aultres. En tesmoing de ce, nous avons
- selle ces lettres dudit scel, sauf tout autre droit. C'en fut fait
- l'an de grace mil trois cens quatre-vings et quatorze, le XXIIII{e}
- jour de septembre. Signe J. LOURS. (Countersigned) BINET.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of the _Bibliotheque du Roi_. _Vide_
-Memoires, _ibid._ pp. 439-40.]
-
-
-I
-
-Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant of the bailiff of Mantes and
-Meullant, made by order of the said bailiff and the King's proctor, on
-March 15, 1403, and certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow
-that had devoured a small child.
-
- A tous ceuls qui ces lettres verront: Symon de Baudemont, lieutenant a
- Meullant, de noble homme Mons. Jehan, seigneur de Maintenon, chevalier
- chambellan du Roy, notre sire, et son bailli de Mante et dudit lieu de
- Meullant: Salut. Savoir faisons, que pour faire et accomplir la
- justice d'une truye qui avait devore un petit enffant, a convenu faire
- necessairement les frais, commissions et depens ci-apres declares,
- c'est a savoir: Pour depense faite pour elle dedans le geole, six sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, au maitre des hautes-oeuvres, qui vint de Paris a Meullant faire
- ladite execution par le commandement et ordonnance de nostre dit
- maistre le bailli et du procureur du roi, cinquante-quatre sols
- parisis.
-
- Item, pour la voiture qui la mena a la justice, six sols parisis.
-
- Item, pour cordes a la lier et haler, deux sols huit deniers parisis.
-
- Item, pour gans, deux deniers parisis.
-
- Lesquelles parties font en somme toute soixante neuf sols huit deniers
- parisis; et tout ce que dessus est dit nous certifions etre vray par
- ces presentes scellees de notre scel, et a greigneur confirmation et
- approbation de ce y avons fait mettre le scel de la chatellenie dudit
- lieu de Meullant, le XV{e} de mars l'an 1403. Signe de Baudemont, avec
- paraffe, et au dessous est le sceau de la chatellenie de Meullant.
-
-[Extract from the manuscripts of M. Herisson, judge of the civil court of
-Chartres, communicated by M. Lejeune to the _Memoires de la Societe Royale
-des Antiquaires de France_. Tome viii, pp. 433-4.]
-
-
-J
-
-Receipt, dated Oct. 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain Pincheon, jailer of
-the royal prisons in the town of Pont de Larche, acknowledging the payment
-of nineteen sous and six deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men
-and to one pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime.
-
- Pardevant Jean Gaulvant, tabellion jure pour le roy nostre sire en la
- viconte du Pont de Larche, fut present Toustain Pincheon, geolier des
- prisons du roy notre sire en la ville du Pont de Larche, lequel cognut
- avoir eu et recue du roy nostre dit sire, par la main de honnorable
- homme et saige Jehan Monnet, viconte dudit lieu du Pont de Larche, la
- somme de 19 sous six deniers tournois qui deus lui estoient, c'est
- assavoir 9 sous six deniers tournois pour avoir trouve (livre) le pain
- du roi aux prisonniers debtenus, en cas de crime, es dites prisons.
- (Here the names of these prisoners are given.) _Item_ a ung porc
- admene es dictes prisons, le 21{e} jour de juing 1408 inclus, jusques
- au 17{e} jour de juillet apres en suivant exclut que icellui porc fu
- pendu par les gares a un des posts de la justice du Vaudereuil, a quoy
- il avoit este condempne pour ledit cas par monsieur le bailly de Rouen
- et les conseuls, es assises du Pont de Larche, par lui tenues le 13{e}
- jour dudict mois de juillet, pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et
- tue ung pettit enfant, auquel temps il a xxiiii jours, valent audit
- pris de 2 deniers tournois par jour, 4 sols 2 deniers, et pour avoir
- trouve et baille la corde qu'il esconvint a lier icelui porc qu'il
- reschapast de ladite prison ou il avait este mis, x deniers tournois.
- Du 16 Octobre 1408.
-
-[Derived from manuscripts of the _Bibliotheque du Roi_. _Vide_ Memoires,
-cit., pp. 428 and 440-1.]
-
-
-K
-
-Letters patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, on Sept. 12,
-1379, granted the petition of the friar Humbert de Poutiers, prior of the
-town of Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine which had
-been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of the law as accomplices in
-an infanticide committed by three sows.
-
- Phelippe, filz du Roi de France, duc de Bourgoingue, au bailli de noz
- terres au conte de Bourgoingue, salut.
-
- Oye la supplication de frere Humbert de Poutiers, prieur de la
- prieurte de la ville de Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, contenant que comme
- le V{e} jour de ce present mois de septembre, Perrinot, fils Jehan
- Muet, dit _le Hochebet_, pourchier commun de ladite ville, gardant les
- pors des habitans d'icelle ville ou finaige d'icelle, et au cry de
- l'un d'iceulx pors, trois truyes estans entre lesdits pors ayent couru
- sus audit Perrenot, l'ayent abattu et mis par terre entre eulx, ainsi
- comme par Jehan Benoit de Norry qu'il gardoit les pourceaulx dudit
- suppliant, et par le pere dudit Perrenot a este trouve blessier a mort
- par lesdites truyes, et si comme icelle Perrenot la confesse en la
- presence de son dit pere e dudit Jehan Benoit, et assez tost apres il
- soit eu mort. Et pour ce que ledit suppliant auquel appartient la
- justice de ladite ville ne fust repris de negligeance son maire
- arresta tous lesdits porcs pour en faire raison et justice en la
- maniere qu'il appartient, et encore les detient prissonniers tant
- ceux de ladite ville comme partie de ceulx dudit suppliant, pour ce
- que dit ledit Jehan Benoit ils furent trouvez ensemble avec lesdites
- truyes, quand ledit Perrenot fut ainsi blessie. Et ledit prieur nous
- ait supplie que il nous plaise consentir que en faisant justice de
- trois ou quatres desdits porcs le demeurant soit delivre. Nous
- inclinans a sa requeste, avons de grace especiale ouctroye et
- consenty, et par ces presentes ouctroyons et consentons que en faisant
- justice et execution desdites trois truyes et de l'ung des pourceaulx
- dudit prieur, que le demeurant desdits pourceaulx soit mis a delivre,
- nonobstant qu'ils aient este a la mort dudit pourchier. Si vous
- mandons que de notre presente grace vous faictes et laissiez joyr et
- user ledit prieur et autres qu'il appartiendra, sans les empescher au
- grace.
-
- Donne a Montbar, le XII{e} jour de septembre de l'an de grace mil CCC
- LXX IX. Ainsi signe. Par monseigneur le duc: _J. Potier_.
-
-[Published by M. Garnier in the _Revue des Societes Savantes_, Dec. 1866,
-pp. 476 _sqq._, from the archives of Cote-d'Or and reprinted by D'Addosio
-in _Bestie Delinquenti_, pp. 277-8.]
-
-
-L
-
-Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on the twelfth of
-September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to be hanged and burned
-together with a bitch. Extract from the records of the clerk's office of
-Loing under the date of Sept. 12, 1606.
-
- Entre le procureur de messieurs[10] demandeur et accusateur au
- principal et requerant le proffit et adjudication de troys deffaulx et
- du quart d'abondant, d'une part, et Guillaume Guyard, accuse,
- deffendeur et defaillant, d'autre part.
-
- Veu le proces criminel, charges et informations, decret de prise de
- corps, adjournement a troys briefs jours, les dicts trois deffaulx, le
- dict quart d'habondant, le recollement des dicts temoings et
- _recognaissance faicte par les dicts temoings de la chienne dont est
- question_, les conclusions dudict procureur, tout veu et eu sur ce
- conseil, nous disant que lesdicts troys deffaulx et quart d'habondant
- ont este bien donnes pris et obtenus contre ledict Guyard accuse,
- attainct et convaincu .........
-
- Pour reparation et punition duquel crime condempnons ledict Guyard
- estre pendu et estrangle a une potence qui, pour cest effet, sera
- dressee aux lices du Marche aux Chevaux de ceste ville de Chartres, au
- lieu et endroict ou les dict sieurs ont tout droit de justice. Et
- auparavant ladicte execution de mort, que ladicte chienne sera
- assommee par l'executeur de la haute justice audict lieu, et seront
- les corps morts, tant dudict Guyard que de la dicte chienne brules et
- mis en cendres, si le dict Guyard peut estre pris et apprehende en sa
- personne, sy non pour le regard du dict Guyard, sera la sentence
- execute par effigie en un tableau qui sera mis et attache a ladicte
- potence, et declarons tous et chascuns ses biens acquis et confisques
- a qui il appartiendra, sur cieux prealablement pris la somme de cent
- cinquante livres d'amende que nous avons adjugees auxdicts sieurs, sur
- laquelle somme seront pris les fraicts de justice. Prononce et execute
- par effigie, pour le regard du dict Guyard les jour et an cy dessus.
- Signe _Guyot_.
-
-[A true copy of the original extract extant in the office of M. Herisson,
-judge of the civil court of Chartres, made by M. Lejeune and communicated
-to the Societe Royale des Antiquaires de France. _Vide_ Memoires of this
-Society, cit., pp. 436-7.]
-
-
-M
-
-Sentence pronounced by the judge of Savigny on Jan. 1457, condemning to
-death an infanticidal sow. Also the sentence of confiscation pronounced
-nearly a month later on the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her
-crime.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, pres des fousses du Chastelet de dit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, ecuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, et ce le 10{e} jour du moys de janvier 1457, presens
- maistre Philebert Quarret, Nicolas Grant-Guillaume, Pierre Bome,
- Pierre Chailloux, Germain des Muliers, Andre Gaudriot, Jehan Bricard,
- Guillaume Gabrin, Philebert Hogier, et plusieurs autres tesmoins a ce
- appelles et requis, l'an et jour dessus dit.
-
- Huguemin Martin, procureur de noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault,
- dame dudit Savigny, demandeur a l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias
- Valot dudit Savigny, et promoteur des causes d'office dudit lieu de
- Savigny, demandeur a l'encontre de Jehan Bailly, alias Valot dudit
- Savigny _deffendeur_, a l'encontre duquel par la voix et organ de
- honorable homme et saige M{r}. Benoit Milot d'Ostun, licencie en loys
- et bachelier en decret, conseillier de monseigneur le duc de
- Bourgoingne, a ete dit et propose que le mardi avant Noel dernier
- passe, _une truye_, et six coichons ses suignens, que sont
- presentement prisonniers de ladite dame, comme ce qu'ils ete prins en
- flagrant delit, ont commis et perpetre mesmement ladicte truye murtre
- et homicide en la personne de Jehan Martin en aige de cinq ans, fils
- de Jehan Martin dudit Savigny, pour la faulte et culpe dudit Jehan
- Bailly, alias Valot, requerant ledit procureur et promoteur desdites
- causes d'office de ladite justice de madite dame, que ledit defendeur
- repondit es chouses dessus dites, desquelles apparaissoit a
- souffisance, et lequel par nous a este somme et requis ce il vouloit
- avoher ladite truhie et ses suignens, sur le cas avant dit, et sur
- ledit cas luy a este faicte sommacion par nous juge avant dit, pour la
- premiere, deuxieme et tierce fois, que s'il vouloit rien dire pourquoi
- justice ne s'en deust faire l'on estoit tout prest de les oir en tout
- ce qu'il vouldrait dire touchant la pugnycion et execution de justice
- que se doit faire de ladite truhie; veu ledit cas, lequel deffendeur a
- dit et respondu qui'l ne vouloit rien dire pour le present et pour ce
- ait este procede en la maniere qui s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que pour
- la partie dudit demandeur, avons este requis instamment de dire droit
- en ceste cause, en la presence dudit defendeur present et non
- contredisant, pourquoy nous juge, avant dit, savoir faisons a tous que
- nous avons procede et donne nostre sentence deffinitive en la maniere
- que s'ensuit; c'est assavoir que veu le cas lequel est tel comme a
- este propose pour la partie dudit demandeur, et duquel appert a
- souffisance tant par tesmoing que autrement dehuement hue. _Aussi
- conseil avec saiges et practiciens_, et aussi considere en ce cas
- l'usance et coustume du pais de Bourgoingne, aiant Dieu devant nos
- yeulx, nous disons et pronuncons par notre dite sentence, declairons
- la tryue de Jehan Martin, de Savigny, estre confisquee a la justice de
- Madame de Savigny, pour estre mise a justice et au dernier supplice,
- et estre pendus par les pieds derriers a ung arbre esprone en la
- justice de Madame de Savigny, considere que la justice de madite dame
- n'est mie presentement elevee, et icelle truye prendre mort audit
- arbre esprone, et ansi le disons et prononcons par notre dicte
- sentence et a droit et au regard des coichons de ladite truye pour ce
- qui n'appert aucunement que iceuls coichons ayent mangies dudit Jehan
- Martin, combien que aient estes troves ensanglantes, l'on remet _la
- cause d'iceulx coichons_ aux tres jours, et avec ce l'on est content
- de les rendre et bailler audit _Jehan Bailly_, en baillant caucion de
- les rendre s'il est trove qu'il aient mangiers dudit Jehan Martin, en
- paiant les poutures, et fait l'on savoir a tous, sous peine de
- l'amende et de 100 sols tournois qu'ils le dieut et declairent dedans
- les autres jours, de laquelle nostre dicte sentence, apres la
- prononciation d'icelle, ledit procureur de ladite dame de Savigny et
- promoteur des causes d'office par la voix dudit maistre Benoist Milot,
- advocat de ladite dame; et aussi ledit procureur a requis et demande
- acte de nostre dicte court a lui estre faicte, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroye, et avec ce instrument, je, Huguenin de Montgachot, clerc,
- notaire publicque de la court de monseigneur le duc de Bourguoigne, en
- la presence des tesmoings ci-dessus nommes, je lui ai ouctroye, ce
- fait l'an et jour dessus dit et presens les dessus tesmoings. _Ita
- est._ Ainsi signe, Mongachot, avec paraphe, et de suite est ecrit:
-
- _Item_, en oultre, nous juge dessus nomme, savoir faisons que
- incontinent apres nostre dicte sentence ainsi donnee par nous les an
- et jour, et en la presence des temoings que dessus, avons somme et
- requis ledit Jehan Bailli, se il vouloit avoher lesdits coichons, et
- se il vouloit bailler caucion pour avoir recreance d'iceulx; lequel a
- dit et repondu qui ne les avohait aucunement, et qui ni demandait rien
- en iceulx coichons; et qui s'en rapportoit a ce que en ferions;
- pourquoy sont demeurez a la dicte justice et seignorie dudit Savigny,
- de laquelle chouse ledit Huguenin Martin, procureur et promoteur des
- causes d'offices, nous en a demande acte de court, lequel lui nous
- avons ouctroye et ouctroyons par ces presentes, et avec ce ledict
- procureur de ladicte dame, a moy notaire subescript, m'en demanda
- instrument, lequel je luy ait ouctroye en la presence desdits
- tesmoings cy-dessus nommes.
-
- _Item_, en apres, nous Nicolas Quaroillon, juge avant dit, savoir
- faisons a tous que incontinent apres les chouses dessus dictes, avons
- faict delivrer realement et de fait ladicte truye a maistre Etienne
- Poinceau, maistre de la haute justice, demeurant a Chalons-sur-Saone,
- pour icelle mettre a execucion selon la forme et teneur de nostre
- dicte sentence, laquelle delivrance d'icelle truehie faicte par nous
- comme dit est, incontinent ledit maistre Estienne a mene sur une
- chairette ladicte truye a ung chaigne esprone, estant en la justice de
- ladite dame Savigny, et en icelluy chaigne esprone, icelluy maistre
- Estienne a pendu ladite truye par les piez derriers; en mectant a
- execution deue nostre dicte sentence, selon la forme et teneur de
- laquelle delivrance et execution d'icelle truye, ledit Huguenin
- Martin, procureur de ladicte dame de Savigny nous a demande acte de
- nostre dicte court a lui estre faicte et donnee, laquelle luy avons
- ouctroyee, et avec ce a moi, notaire subscript, m'a demande instrument
- ledit procureur a luy estre donnee, je luy ai ouctroye en la presence
- des temoings cy-dessus nommez, ce fait les au et jour dessus ditz.
- Ainsi signe Mongachot, avec paraphe.
-
-Nearly a month later, on "the Friday after the Feast of the Purification
-of Our Lady the Virgin" (which occurred on Feb. 2.), "the six little
-porklets or sucklings" were brought to trial. The following is the _proces
-verbal_.
-
- Jours tenus au lieu de Savigny, sur la chaussee de l'Estang dudit
- Savigny, par noble homme Nicolas Quarroillon, escuier, juge dudit lieu
- de Savigny, pour noble damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame dudit
- Savigny, et ce le vendredy apres la feste de la Purification Notre
- Dame Vierge, presens Guillaume Martin, Guiot de Layer, Jehan Martin,
- Pierre Tiroux et Jehan Bailly, tesmoings, etc.
-
- Veue les sommacions et requisitions faicte par nous juge de noble
- damoiselle Katherine de Barnault, dame de Savigny, a Jehan Bailly
- alias Valot de advohe on repudie les coichons de la truye nouvellement
- mise a execution par justice a raison du murtre commis et perpetre par
- la dicte truye en la personne de Jehan Martin, lequel Jehan Bailli a
- este remis de advoher lesdites coichons et de baillier caucion
- d'iceulx coichons rendre, s'il estoit trouve qu'ils feussions
- culpables du delict avant dict commis par ladicte truye et de payer
- les poutures, comme appert par acte de nostre dicte court, et autres
- instrumens souffisans; pourquoi le tout veu en conseil avec saiges,
- declairons et pronuncons par nostre sentence deffinitive, et a droit:
- iceulx coichons competer et appartenir comme biens vaccans a ladite
- dame de Savigny et les luy adjugeons comme raison, l'usence et la
- coustume de pais le vueilt. De laquelle nostre dicte sentence, ledit
- procureur de ladite dame en a demande acte, de nostre dicte court a
- luy estre donnee et ouctroyee. Avec ce en a demande instrument a moy
- notaire subscript, lequel il luy a ouctroye en la presence des dessus
- nommes. Signe Mongachot avec paraphe.
-
-[Extract from the archives of Monjeu and Dependencies, belonging to M.
-Lepelletier de Saint-Fargeau. (Savigny-sur-Etang, boete 25{e}, liasse 1,
-2, & 3, etc.) _Vide_ Memoires, cit., pp. 441-5.]
-
-
-N
-
-Sentence pronounced April 18, 1499, in a criminal prosecution instituted
-before the Bailiff of the Abbey of Josaphat, in the Commune of Seves, near
-Chartres, against a pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an
-infant. In this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs for
-negligence, because the child was their fosterling.
-
- _Le lundi 18 avril 1499._
-
- Veu le proces criminel faict par-devant nous a la requeste du
- procureur de messieurs le religieux, abbe et convent de Iosaphat, a
- l'encontre de Iehan Delalande et sa femme, prisonniers esprisons de
- ceans, pour raison de la mort advenue a la personne d'une jeune
- enfant, nommee Gilon, agee de un an et demi ou environ; laquelle
- enfant avoit ete baillee a nourrice par sa mere: ledict meurtre advenu
- et commis par un pourceau de l'aage de trois mois ou environ, aulxdits
- Delalande et sa femme appartenant; les confessions desdicts Delalande
- et sa femme; les informations par nous et le greffier de ladite
- jurisdiction faictes a la requete dudict procureur; le tout veu et en
- sur ce conseil aulx saiges, _ledit Jehan Delalande et sa femme, avons
- condampnes et condampnons en l'amende envers de justice de dix-huit
- franz_, qu'il a convenus pour ce faire, tel que de raison, et a tenir
- prison jusqu'a plein payement et satisfaction d'iceulx a tout le moins
- qu'ils avoient baille bonne et seure caution d'iceulx.
-
- _Et en tant que touche le dict pourceau_, pour les causes contenues
- et etablies audict proces, _nous les avons condampne et condampnons a
- etre pendu et execute par justice_, en la jurisdiction des mes dicts
- seigneurs, par notre sentence definitive, _et a droit_.
-
- Donne sous la contre scel aux causes dudict baillage, les an et jour
- que susdicts. _Signe_ C. Briseg avec paraphe.
-
-[The complete record of this trial contains the minutest details of the
-proceedings, ending with the execution of the pig, and was taken from the
-archives of the Abbey Josaphat at the time of the Revolution by M. B.,
-Secretary-general of the department. Since then it has disappeared; but
-this copy of the original, made at that time, is declared by M. Lejeune to
-be perfectly exact. _Vide_ Memoires, cit., pp. 434-5.]
-
-
-O
-
-Sentence pronounced June 14, 1494, by the grand mayor of the church and
-monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a pig to be hanged and
-strangled for infanticide committed on the fee-farm of
-Clermont-lez-Montcornet.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces presentes lettres verront ou orront, Jehan
- Lavoisier licentie ez loix, et grand mayeur de l'eglise et monastere
- de monsieur St. Martin de Laon, ordre de Premontre, et les echevins de
- ce meme lieu; comme il nous eust ete apporte et affirme par le
- procureur-fiscal ou syndic des religieux, abbe et convent de
- Saint-Martin de Laon, qu'en la cense de Clermont-lez-Montcornet,
- appartenant en toute justice haulte, moyenne et basse auxdits
- relligieux, ung jeune pourceaulx eust estrangle et _defacie_ ung jeune
- enfant estant au berceau, fils de Jehan Lenfant, vachier de ladite
- cense de Clermont, et de Gillon sa femme, nous advertissant et nous
- requerant a cette cause, que sur ledit cas voulussions proceder, comme
- justice at raison le desiroit et requerroit; et que depuis, afin de
- savoir et cognoitre la verite dudit cas, eussion oui et examine par
- serment, Gillon, femme dudit Lenfant, Jehan Benjamin, et Jehan
- Daudancourt, censiers de ladite cense, lesquels nous eussent dit et
- affirme par leur serment et conscience, que le lendemain de Pasques
- dernier passe ledict Lenfant estant en la garde de ses bestes, ladicte
- Gillon sa femme desjettoit de ladicte cense, pour aller au village de
- Dizy ..., ayant delaisse en sa maison ledict petit enfant.... Elle le
- renchargea a une sienne fille, agee de neuf ans ... pendant et durant
- lequel temps ladite fille s'en alla jouer autour de ladite cense, et
- laisse ledit enfant couche en son berceau; et ledit temps durant,
- ledit pourceaulz entra dedans ladite maison ... et defigura et mangea
- le visage et gorge dudit enfant.... Tot apres ledit enfant, au moyen
- des morsures et devisagement que lui fit ledit pourceaulz, de ce
- siecle trepassa: savoir faisons.... Nous, en detestation et horreur
- dudit cas, et afin d'exemplaire et garde justice, avons dit, juge,
- sentencie, prenonce et appointe, que ledit pourceaulz _estant detenu
- prisonnier_ et enferme en ladite abbaye, sera par le maistre des
- hautes-oeuvres, pendu et estrangle, en une fourche de bois, aupres et
- joignant des fourchee patibulaires et haultes justices desdits
- relligieux, estant aupres de leur cense d'Avin.... En temoing de ce
- nous avons scelle ces presentes de notre scel.
-
- Ce fut fait le quatorzieme jour de juing, l'an 1494, et scelle en cire
- rouge; et sur le dos est ecrit:
-
- Sentence pour ung pourceaulz execute par justice, admene en la cense
- de Clermont, et etrangle en une fourche les gibez d'Avin.
-
-[M. Boileau de Maulaville, in _L'Annuaire de l'Aisne 1812_, p. 88. _Vide_
-Memoires, cit., pp. 428 and 446-7.]
-
-
-P
-
-Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the royal notary and proctor of
-the bailiwick and bench of the court of judicatory of Senlis, condemning a
-sow with a black snout to be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in
-murdering a girl of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the
-said seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of an
-arbitrary fine.
-
- A tous ceulx qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jehan Lobry, notaire
- royal et procureur au bailliage et siege presidial de Senlis, bailly
- et garde et seigneurie de Saint-Nicolas d'Acy, les le dit Senlis, pour
- M. M. les religieux, prieur et coivent du diet lieu, salut; savoir
- faisons:
-
- Veu le proces extraordinairement fait a la requete du Procureur de la
- seigneurie du dict Saint-Nicolas, pour raison de la mort advenue a une
- jeune fille agee de quatre mois ou environ, enfant de Lyenor Darmeige
- et Magdeleine Mahieu sa femme, demeurant au dict Saint-Nicolas,
- trouvee avoir este mangee et devoree en la tete, main senestre et au
- dessus de la mamelle dextre par une truye ayant le museau noire,
- appartenant a Louis Mahieu, frere de la dite femme et son proche
- voisin;
-
- Le proces verbal de la visitation du dict enfant en la presence de son
- parrain et de sa marraine qui l'ont recogneu;
-
- Les informations faites pour raison du dit cas, interrogatoires des
- dits Louis Mahieu et sa femme, avec la visitation faicte de la dicte
- truye a l'instant du dit cas advenu et tout considere en conseil, il a
- ete conclu et advise par justice que POUR LA CRUAUTE ET FEROCITE
- COMMISE PAR LA DITE TRUYE, elle sera exterminee par mort et pour ce
- faire sera pendue par l'executeur de la haulte justice en ung arbre
- estant dedans les fins et mottes de la dicte justice sur le grande
- chemin rendant de Saint-Firman au dit Senlis, en faisant deffenses a
- tous habitans et sujet des terres et seigneurie du dit Saint-Nicolas
- de ne plus laisser echapper telle et semblables bestes sans bonne et
- seure garde, sous peine d'amende arbitraire et de pugnition corporelle
- s'ily echoit, sauf et sans prejudice a faire droit sur les conclusions
- prinses par le dit Procureur a l'encontre des dits Mahieu et sa femme
- ainsi que de raison, au temoin de quoy nous avon scelle les presentes
- du scel de la dicte justice.
-
- Ce fu faist le jeudi 27{e} jour de Mars 1557 et execute ledit jour par
- l'executeur de la haulte justice du dit Senlis.
-
-[Dom. Grenier, _Manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris_, tome
-xx. p. 87. Quoted by D'Addosio, who, however, confounds the prosecution of
-1567 with that of 1499.]
-
-
-Q
-
-Sentence of death upon a bull, May 16, 1499, by the bailiff of the Abbey
-of Beaupre, for furiously killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or
-fifteen years of age.
-
- A tous ceux qui ces presentes lettres verront, Jean Sondar, Lieutenant
- du Bailly du temporel de l'eglise & abbaye notre Dame de Beaupres de
- l'ordre de Cisteaux, pour venerables & discretes personnes & mes
- tres-honorez seigneurs, messeigneurs les religieux abbe & convent de
- ladite abbaye, salut. Comme a la requeste du procureur de mesdits
- seigneurs, & par leur justice temporelle qu'ils ont en leur terre &
- seigneurie du Caurroy eut ete nagaires prins & mis en la main d'icelle
- leur justice ung thorreau de poil rouge, appartenant a Jean Boullet
- censier & fermier de mesdits seigneurs, demeurant en leur maison &
- cense dudit Caurroy, lequel thorreau etant aux champs & sur le
- territoiiere d'icelle eglise, auroit par furiosite occis & mis a mort
- un joine fils, nomme Lucas Dupont, de l'age de quatorze a quinze ans,
- ou environ, serviteur dudit censier, lequel il avoit mis a la garde de
- ces bestes a corne, entre lesquelles estoit ledit thorreau. Duquel
- thorreau ledit procureur de mesdits seigneurs requeroit la justice
- estre faite, & qu'il fut execute jusqu'a mort inclusivement par la
- justice de mesdits seigneurs pour occasion de icelui crimme de omicide
- & de la detestation d'iceluy. Sur quoy enqueste & information eussent
- ete faites de la forme & maniere iceluy homicide, par laquelle ledit
- procureur nous eust requis sur ce luy estre fait droit. Savoir faisons
- que veu laditte enqueste & information & sur tout en conseil & advis,
- nous par nostre sentence & jugement, avons dies & jugie, que pour
- raison de l'omicide, dont dessus est touchie, fait par ledit thorreau
- en la personne d'iceluy Lucas, & pour la detestation du crime d'iceluy
- homicide, ledit thorreau nomme confisque a mesdits seigneurs sera
- execute jusques a mort inclusivement par leurdite justice, & pendu a
- une fourche ou potence es mettes de leurdite terre & seigneurie dudit
- Caurroy, aupres du lieu ou solloit estre assise la justice. Et ad ce
- le avons condamne & condamnons. En tesmoing de ce avons mis nostre
- scel a ces lettres qui furent faites & pronunchies audit lieu du
- Caurroy en la presence de Guillaume Gave du Mottin, Jehan Custien
- l'aisne, Jehan Henry, Jehan Boullet, hommes & subjets de mesdits
- seigneurs, Jehan Charles, & Clement le Carpentier, & plusieurs autres
- les seizieme jour de May l'an mil quatre cens quatre-vingt-dix-neuf.
- Ainsi signe, Ileugles, ad ce commis.
-
-[The original records of this trial for homicide are in the archives of
-the Abbey of Beaupre. Vide _Voyage Litteraire de deux Religieux
-Benedictins de la Congregation de St. Maur_. Seconde Partie, pp. 166-7.
-Paris, 1717. The Benedictins were Dom. Edmond Martene and Dom. Ursin
-Durand.]
-
-
-R
-
-Scene from Racine's comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a dog is tried and
-condemned to the galleys for stealing a capon.
-
-After the accused had been found guilty, his counsel brings in the puppies
-and thus appeals to the compassion of the court:
-
- "Venez, famille desolee;
- Venez, pauvres enfants qu'on veut rendre orphelins;
- Venez faire parler vos esprits enfantins.
- Oui, messieurs, vous voyez ici notre misere;
- Nous sommes orphelins, rendez-nous notre pere,
- Notre pere par qui nous fumes engendres,
- Notre pere qui nous....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez, tirez, tirez.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Notre pere, messieurs....
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Tirez donc, Quels vacarmes!
- Ils ont pisse partout.
-
- L'INTIME.
-
- Monsieur, voyez nos larmes.
-
- DAUDIN.
-
- Ouf! je me sens deja pris de compassion.
- Ce que c'est qu' a propos toucher la passion!
- Je suis bien empeche. La verite me presse;
- Le crime est avere, lui-meme il le confesse.
- Mais, s'il est condamne, l'embarras est egal;
- Voila bien des enfants reduits a l'hopital."
- _Les Plaideurs_, Act III, sc. 3.
-
-
-S
-
-Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the University of Leipsic
-condemning a cow to death for having killed a woman at Machern near
-Leipsic, July 20, 1621.
-
- Ao 1621 den 20 July ist Hanss Fritzchen weib Catharina alhier zu
- Machern wohnende von Ihrer eigen Mietkuhe,[11] da sie gleich
- hochleibss schwanger gang, auff Ihren Eigenen hofe zu Tode gestossen
- worden. Vber welch vnerhoerten Fall der Juncker Friederich von
- Lindenau, als Erbsass diesess ortes, in der Jurisstischen Facultet zu
- Leipzig sich darueber dess Rechtes belernet: Welche am Ende dess
- Vrtelss diese wort also aussgesprochen: So wird die Kuhe, als
- abschewlich thier, an Einen abgelegenen oeden ort billig gefuehret,
- daselbst Erschlagen oder Erschossen, vnnd vnabgedecht begraben.
- Christoph Hain domalss zu Selstad wohnend hat sie hinder der
- Schaefferey Erschlagen vnd begraben, welchess geschehen den 5. Augusti
- auff den Abend, nach Eintreibung dess Hirtenss zwischen 8 vnd 9 vhren.
-
-[Extract from the parish-register of Machern, near Leipsic, printed in
-_Anzeiger fuer Kunde der deutschen Vorzeit_. No. 4, April 1880, col. 102.]
-
-
-
-
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-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
- Abbott, Rev. Lyman, regards bad impulses as suggestions of evil
- spirits, 76
-
- Achan, his severe punishment by Joshua, 180
-
- Addosio, Carlo d', his _Bestie Delinquenti_ cited, 1, 4;
- his list of animal prosecutions, 135;
- on pigs as a public nuisance in Italy, 159
-
- AEschines, cited, 172
-
- AEschylus, his _Choephoroi_ cited, 174
-
- Ahuramazda, 57, 61, 82, 176
-
- Alard, Jean, burned alive as a Sodomite for coition with a Jewess, 153
-
- Altiat, his poem quoted, 93
-
- Amira, Prof. Karl von, his _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ cited, 1-3,
- 137
-
- Anathemas, only effective when formally complete, as with all
- incantations and excommunications, 4, 36;
- citations from the Bible in proof of their power, 25;
- render an orchard barren and expel eels and blood-suckers from Lake
- Leman, 27;
- turn white bread black to punish heresy, 28;
- fatal to swallows and flies, which disturb religious services, 28, 29;
- sold by the Pope, 30;
- hurled against noxious vermin, 37;
- made more effective by the prompt payment of tithes, 37;
- differ from excommunications, 51-54;
- superseded in Protestantism by prayer and fasting and in science by
- Paris green, 53
-
- Animals, prosecuted by civil and ecclesiastical courts, 2;
- office of the Church in repressing articulate and rodent, 3, 5;
- as satellites of Satan or agents of God, 5, 6, 52-57, 67;
- personification of, 10, 11;
- their competency as witnesses, 11;
- origin of their judicial prosecution, 12;
- as born criminals, 14;
- tendency of modern penology to efface the distinction between men and,
- 14, 193;
- instances of their criminal prosecution, 16, 18, 21, 37-50, 93-124,
- 134-157, 160-163;
- methods of procedure against, 31;
- whether legally laity or clergy, 32;
- punitive and preventive prosecution of, 33;
- their consciousness of right and wrong, 35, 247;
- false conception of the purpose of their prosecution, 40;
- can be anathematized, but not excommunicated, 51;
- items of expense in prosecuting, 49, 138, 140-143;
- not mere machines, 66;
- in folk-lore, 84;
- worship of, 85;
- imperfect lists of prosecuted, 135-137;
- burned and buried alive, 138;
- put to the rack to extort confession, 139;
- confiscation of valuable, 164, 189;
- unclean flesh of executed, 169;
- imputed criminality of, 177;
- criminals as ferocious, 212;
- mental and moral qualities of men and, 234;
- six categories of their criminal offences, 235;
- the safety of society the supreme law in the judicial punishment of
- men and, 247-252
-
- Anatolus, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Angel, Emile, cited, 124
-
- Anglo-Saxon law, its retributive character, 168;
- its cruel doctrine of accessories, 178;
- on tainted swords, 187
-
- Angro-mainyush, 57, 59, 61, 82
-
- Anthony, St., patron of pigs, 158
-
- Anthropologists, criminal researches of 211, 215
-
- Aquinas. _See_ Thomas
-
- Arcadius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Ashes, modern and mediaeval use of vermifugal, 53
-
- Augustine, St., cited, 94, 106
-
- _Aura corrumpens_ in houses and stalls, 8
-
- Aurelian, Father, on diabolical possession, 75
-
- Avesta, on exorcisms, 36;
- on good and evil creations, 57;
- on mad dogs, 176
-
- Ayrault, Pierre, his protest against animal prosecutions, 109
-
- Azpilcueta, Martin. _See_ Dr. Navarre.
-
-
- Baal-zebub (Beelzebub), fly-god, 84;
- his preference for black beasts, 165
-
- Bailly, Gaspard, his _Traite des Monitoires_ cited, 52, 92-108
-
- "Basilisk-egg," 10
-
- Basilius, St., his insect-expelling girdle, 136
-
- Basilovitch, Ivan, his conception of retributive justice, 183
-
- Bassos, Kassianos, prefers rat-bane to adjuration, 132
-
- Beasts, sweet and stenchy, 55
-
- Bees, tainted honey of homicidal, 9
-
- Bell, banished to Siberia by the Russian Government, 175
-
- Benedikt Prof., on the brain-formation of criminals, 212
-
- Bernard, Claude, his idea of the physiologist, 245
-
- Bernard, St., kills flies by cursing them, 28
-
- Bernardes, Manoel, his _Nova Floresta_, 124
-
- Berriat-Saint-Prix, his valuable researches, 2, 17, 20;
- list of prosecuted animals, 135-137
-
- Bichat, his defective cranium, 217
-
- Bischofberger, Dr. Theobald, his curious theory of the effects of
- unexpiated crime on persons and property, 6-8;
- his recent brochure in defence of exorcisms, 73
-
- Bischoff, Prof., his hobby refuted by the weight of his own brain, 218
-
- Blackstone, on deodands, 186, 189, 192
-
- Blood-letting, as a panacea in law and medicine, 194
-
- "Blue Laws," an advance in penal legislation, 209
-
- Bodelschwingh, his _bacillus infernalis_, 91
-
- Boehme, Jacob, his definition of magic, 127
-
- Boer, Nicolaus, on cohabitation with a Jewess as sodomy, 153
-
- Bogos, homicidal beasts executed by the, 155
-
- Bonnivard, Francois, presides as judge in a trial of vermin, 38
-
- Borromeo, Carlo, his cruelty in punishing heresy, 208
-
- Bougeant, Pere, his _Amusement Philosophique_ cited, 66-69;
- 80-86, 88-90, 92
-
- Bracton, 167;
- on deodands, 186
-
- Brain, its size not always a measure of mental capacity, 217-219
-
- Browne, Dr. William Hand, cited, 187
-
- Buggery, instances of this "nameless crime," 147-153;
- she-ass acquitted and man condemned to death for, 150;
- in the Carolina punished with death by fire, 151;
- in the Mosaic law, 152;
- sexual intercourse with a Jewess regarded as, 153
-
- Bull, executed for murder, 161
-
-
- Calvin, his conception of God, 59
-
- Canute, King, 178
-
- Carolina, the, its severe penalties, 182
-
- Carpzov, Benedict, on sodomy, 151
-
- Cattle, bewitched by bad air, 8
-
- Cervantes, 167
-
- Character, factors in the formation of, 219;
- responsibility for, 239, 243
-
- Charcot, Dr., on the curative power of faith, 80, 225
-
- Chassenee, Bartholomew, his _Consilia_, 2, 21-23;
- distinguished as a defender of prosecuted rats, 18;
- equal rights of rats and Waldenses recognized by, 20;
- his erudition, 24;
- his absurd deductions, 26;
- regards animals as laity in the eye of the law, 32
-
- Chinese, recent beheading of idols for murder, 174
-
- Church, the, its treatment of noxious insects as incarnations of Satan
- and as agents of God, 3-6;
- capital punishment never inflicted by, 31;
- its power to stay the ravages of vermin unquestioned, 50
-
- Cicero, cited, 22, 101;
- his approval of atrocious penalties, 178
-
- Cock, burned at the stake for laying eggs, 10, 11, 162;
- nature and origin of its supposed eggs, 163-5
-
- Cockatrice, 12, 163
-
- Coleridge, his definition of madman, 228
-
- Corpses, prosecuted and executed, 110, 198, 199;
- cannot inherit, 110
-
- "Corruption of blood," in theology and law, 181
-
- Courcelle-Seneuil, his view of prisons, 212
-
- Cows, executed for homicide, 169
-
- Cranks, execution of, 249-251
-
- Cretella, 17
-
- Cretins, their brains not always abnormal, 219;
- sentenced to death, 251
-
- Criminality, examples of imputed, 177-185;
- ancient and mediaeval conceptions of, 200;
- punished for the safety of society, 211, 248;
- compared to vitriol, 212;
- supposed physical indices of, 213-217;
- casual and constitutional, 214-223;
- ativism the source of, 212, 215;
- the result of hypnotism, 223-225;
- due to many uncontrollable conditions, 230;
- motives underlying animal, 235;
- animals conscious of, 247;
- contagiousness of, 252, 256
-
- Crollanza, his record of the prosecution of caterpillars, 122
-
- Crosiers, vermifugal efficacy of, 30
-
- Cybele, invoked against vermin, 133
-
-
- Damhouder, Jacobus, picture of animal crimes in his _Rerum Criminalium
- Praxis_, 16;
- citations from this work, 109, 146;
- regards sexual intercourse with Jews, Turks, and Saracens as sodomy,
- 153
-
- Dasturs, Parsi, Zarathushtra's teachings degraded by the, 59
-
- Demosthenes, cited, 172
-
- Deodands, nature of, 186-190, 192;
- abolished in England under Queen Victoria, 192
-
- Devils, their damage to landed property, 7;
- multiplied by the spread of Christianity, 13, 80;
- destined to eternal torments after the Last Judgment, 68-70;
- incarnate in every babe, 70;
- maladies produced by, 72;
- modern inventions the devices of, 229
-
- Didymos, his "Geoponics," 133
-
- Dimitri, Prince, bell banished to Siberia for rejoicing over his
- assassination, 175
-
- Dogs, trial and execution of mad, 176;
- crucified in Rome for imputed crime, 177
-
- Doepler, Jacob, on sodomy, 152;
- on _Lex talionis_, 182;
- on vampires, 197
-
- Dove, symbol of the Holy Ghost, 57
-
- Draco (Drakon), his law punishing weapons, 172
-
- Dreyfus, his prosecution instigated by a sensational novel, 253-255
-
- Ducol, Pierre, prosecutor of weevils, 38
-
- Dumas, his _Count of Monte Christo_ cited, 240
-
- Duret, Jean, his _Treatise on Pains and Penalties_, 108
-
-
- Ecclesiastical tribunal, an, rejects the Mosaic law and discusses crime
- from a psychiatrical point of view, 170
-
- Eldrad, St., expels serpents, 50
-
- Electricity, execution by, 210
-
- Elk, as demon, 90
-
- Erechtheus, punishment of deadly weapons, 172
-
- Erinnys, appeasing the, 174
-
- Escheat, in Scotch law, 189
-
- Eusebius, describes hell as very cold, 105
-
- Eustace, St., 56
-
- Evolution, dogma of original sin supplanted by the doctrine of, 232
-
- Excommunications, pronounced against insects by the Church, 3;
- sold at Rome, 30;
- properly speaking, animals not subject to, 51, 100;
- comical survivals of, 128.
- _See_ Anathemas
-
- Exorcisms, their efficiency recognized by Heidelberg professors, 27;
- applied as plasters, 72;
- superseded by conjurations among Protestants, 125;
- by Mohammedans, 137
-
-
- Falcon, Pierre, defender of weevils, 38
-
- _Felo de se_, a sort of treason, 190.
- _See_ Suicide
-
- Feuchtersleben, Baron Von, records cases of morbid imitation, 253
-
- Field-mice, conjuration of, 133
-
- Flesh of executed animals tainted, 169
-
- Flies as demons, 28, 86
-
- Florian, St., the protector of houses from fire, 136
-
- Fly-flaps, papal, 29
-
- Formosus, Pope, his corpse tried and condemned for usurpation, 198
-
- Foscolo, Ugo, his cranium that of an idiot, 218
-
- Fox, diabolical nature of the, 56
-
- Frederic the Great, his penal reforms, 207
-
- Fricker, Thuering, doctor of laws, chancellor and prosecutor of inger,
- 116
-
-
- Gadflies, episcopal rescript against, 124
-
- Galton, on heredity, 239
-
- Gambetta, his small and abnormal brain, 217
-
- Geese, sacred, rewarded at Rome for the vigilance of their foremothers,
- 177
-
- Genius, to madness close allied, 228
-
- Goerres, recent case of conjuration recorded by, 125
-
- Gratiolet, on the brain of the "Hottentot Venus," 218
-
- Greeks, ancient, ascribed pestilence to the miasma of unexpiated murder,
- 9, 174
-
- Gregory of Tours, on bronze dormice and serpents as talismans, 132
-
- Greysser, Daniel, the efficiency of bans not supernatural, 128
-
- Gross, his mis-statement concerning the cock of Bale, 162
-
- Guiteau, deterrent effect of his execution, 250
-
-
- Harpokration, Valerius, cited, 172
-
- Harrison, Miss, cited, 187
-
- Hart, symbolism of the, 56
-
- Hawks, dead, as protectors of hens, 252
-
- Hemmerlein, Felix. _See_ Malleolus
-
- Hens, crowing, 10
-
- Heredity, its predetermining influence as viewed by theologians and
- scientists, 232
-
- Heymanns, Mynheer, on responsibility for character, 243
-
- Hierarchies, their failure in civil government, 249
-
- Honorius, his atrocious edict, 179
-
- Horses, condemned to death for homicide, 162
-
- Hubert, St., 56
-
- Hugon, St., expels venom from serpents by excommunication, 103
-
- Hunters among savages, their superstitious fear of killing wild
- animals, 174
-
- Hypnotism, its causal relation to crime, 223-226;
- as the basis of the witchcraft delusion, 225
-
-
- Idols, decapitation of, 174
-
- Inger, prosecuted and put under ban, 113-115;
- not in Noah's Ark, 120
-
- Insanity, degrees of, 200-203;
- in Italian and German law, 204-206;
- difficulty of defining, 226-228;
- in English law, 246;
- moral, 250;
- as a shelter for crime, 256
-
- Insects, prosecution of, 37, 41-49;
- incarnations of demons, 86
-
- Italy, palliation of crime in, 203, 204
-
-
- Jeanneret, Marie, her toxicomania, 240-246
-
- Jews, in Christian legislation on a par with beasts, 152, 165
-
- John the Lamb, his curse fatal to fish, 28
-
- Jonson, Ben, cited, 130
-
- Jordan, Father, casts out devils with Lourdes water in 1887, 74
-
- Joergensen, cited, 17
-
- Joshua, his penal cruelty, 180
-
- King Mode, his discourse with Queen Reason, 55
-
- Kirchenheim, Prof. Von, urges reform of our penal codes, 219
-
- Koran, the, on the punishment of beasts, 171
-
- Kukis, destroy homicidal trees, 171
-
-
- Laas, his definition of judicial punishment, 238
-
- Lacassagne, his six categories of crime, 235
-
- Langevin, Pierre Gilles, fresco of the execution of a sow described by,
- 141
-
- Lapeyronie, his dissertation proving that cocks never lay eggs, 163
-
- Le Bon, on hereditary criminality, 223
-
- Leipsic, decision of the Law Faculty concerning a homicidal cow, 169
-
- Leo XIII., his exorcism of Satan and apostate angels, 73
-
- Letang, Louis, causal relation of his novel to the Dreyfus affair, 254
-
- Lex talionis, striking applications of this oldest form of penal
- justice, 167;
- inflicts horrible mutilations, 182
-
- Lilienberg, Mathias Abele Von, his record of a dog sentenced to prison,
- 175
-
- Liszt, Prof. Von, on retributive and preventive penalties, 237
-
- Locusts, expelled by exorcisms and aspergeoires, 3, 64;
- dispersed and destroyed by excommunication, 22, 93, 94;
- prosecution of, 95-108, 136
-
- Lohbauer, Pater Franz Xaver, ascribes nervous disease to diabolical
- possession, 71
-
- Lombroso, on animals as born criminals, 14;
- opposed to trial by jury, 185;
- regards tattooing, dark thick hair and thin beards, as signs of
- criminality, 213;
- on ativism as the source of crime, 215;
- innate criminality not eradicated by education, 223;
- compares the capital punishment of cretins and cranks to that of
- animals, 251
-
- Lucifer, writhes under the water of Lourdes, 74
-
- Lycia, punished by imputation, 180
-
-
- Majolus, cited, 86
-
- Maledictions. _See_ Anathemas
-
- Malleolus, Felix, his theory of exorcisms endorsed by Heidelberg
- professors, 27;
- records a prosecution of Spanish flies, 110;
- his formula for banning serpents, 121
-
- Mangin, Arthur, cited, 16, 139
-
- Manicheans, their doctrine of good and evil, 60
-
- Manouvrier, Dr., likens Gambetta's skull to that of a savage, 217
-
- Mantegazza, Prof., his "tormentatore," 245
-
- Manu, Institutes of, 168
-
- Marro, on metaphors as facts, 216
-
- Mather, Cotton, records the execution of a pious Sodomite and eight
- beasts, 148
-
- Menebrea, M. L., 2, 17;
- his theory untenable, 40
-
- Mephistopheles, the lord of rodents and vermin, 85
-
- Mithridates, experiments with poisons, 244
-
- Moles, prosecution of, 111-113
-
- Monks, as landed proprietors in France, 158
-
- Monomania, frequency of, 227
-
- Morel, Claude, defender of weevils, 38
-
- Mornacius, his record of mad dogs sentenced to death, 176
-
- Morselli, Prof., on the causes of suicide, 229
-
- Mosaic law, the, rejected by an ecclesiastical court, 170;
- barbarity of, 167, 180
-
- Murder, miasma of, 9, 174;
- weapons tainted by, 187-190
-
- Mutilations, in accordance with the Lex talionis, 176, 182
-
- Mythology, monstrosities and metamorphoses of classical, 64;
- in modern life, 228
-
-
- Naquet, regards criminals as no more culpable than poisons, 212
-
- Narrenkoetterlein, dog sentenced to a, 175
-
- Nature, imperfection of, 61
-
- Navarre, Dr., regards fish as cacodemons, 90
-
- Nebuchadnezzar, a satanic metamorphosis, 63
-
- Nikon, his statue punished for manslaughter committed in self-defence,
- 172
-
- Noah, God's covenant with him required the capital punishment of beasts,
- 168
-
- Novels, morbific influence of sensational, 253
-
- Numa Pompilius, quoted, 106;
- his law for protecting boundary stones, 183
-
-
- Origen, believed in the ultimate redemption of Satan, 68
-
- Osenbrueggen, Eduard, his theory of the personification of animals, 10,
- 17
-
- Ovid, quoted, 101, 103
-
- Oxen, executed, 168;
- punished although innocent, 183
-
-
- Pachacutez, barbarous code of this Peruvian Justinian, 179
-
- Papal See, trial and punishment of corpses by the, 198
-
- Pape, Guy, cited, 108
-
- Paracelsus, on the magnetic power of the will, 126
-
- Pardoning power, exercise of the, 248
-
- Parsis, their Dasturs, 59;
- co-workers of Ahuramazda, 61, 82;
- no doctrine of atonement, 63
-
- Pasteur, exterminates noxious microbes, 62
-
- Patriotism as a perverter of justice, 185
-
- Pausanias cited, 172
-
- Penology, man and beast in modern, 14, 193;
- mediaeval and modern, 15, 200, 206-210;
- in Italy and Germany, 203-206;
- brutality of mediaeval, 206-209;
- moral and penal responsibility, 210;
- still inchoate, 15, 219-223, 257;
- deterrent aims of, 211, 248, 249;
- law of the survival of the fittest in, 221-223;
- punitive and preventive, 237;
- its relation to psycho-pathology, 248
-
- Pereira Gomez, forerunner of Descartes, 66
-
- Perjury, retaliative punishment of, 182
-
- Perrodet, Jean, defender of inger, 118
-
- Phlebotomy. _See_ Blood-letting
-
- Pico di Mirandola, quoted, 103
-
- Piety, market value of, 7
-
- Pigs. _See_ Swine
-
- Pirminius, St., his anathema of venomous reptiles, 29
-
- Plato, his theory of creation, 59;
- on homicidal animals, 173;
- on retributive and preventive punishment, 237
-
- Pliny, quoted, 103
-
- Pollux, Julius, quoted, 172
-
- Potter, a pious Sodomite executed, 148
-
- Predestination in theology and science, 232-234
-
- Prussia, barbarous punishments, 180;
- opposed to reform, 205
-
- Prytaneion (Prytaneum), condemned inanimate objects for crime, 172;
- but not corpses, 199
-
- Pufendorf, Samuel, on contagiousness in crime, 256
-
- Puritans, their penal enactments, 209
-
- Pythagoras, his doctrine of transmigration, 87
-
-
- Queen Reason, her discourse on animals in reply to King Mode, 56-58
-
-
- Racine, his caricature of beast trials in _Les Plaideurs_, 166, 361
-
- Ram, banished to Siberia, 175
-
- Randolph, his allusion to rhyming rats, 130
-
- Rats, prosecution of, 18-21, 136;
- friendly letters of advice to, 129;
- Irish custom of rhyming, 130
-
- Raven, an imp of Satan, 57
-
- Renaud d'Alleins, on equal rights of Waldenses and rats, 20
-
- Responsibility, moral and penal, 210
-
- Reusch, Prof. Dr. Fr. Heinrich, denounces bishops as promoters of
- superstition, 14
-
- Ro-ro-ro-ro, an anti-semitic devil cast out in 1842, 73
-
- Rosarius, Hierolymus, describes the exposure of crucified lions and
- gibbeted wolves as a warning to their kind, 251;
- regards animals as often more rational than men, 252
-
-
- Satan, his earthly sovereignty, 60, 70;
- the doctrine of his final redemption, 68
-
- Schilling, on the prosecution of inger, 113, 120
-
- Schlaeger, cited, 176
-
- Schleswig, its punishment of homicidal timber, 187
-
- Schmid, Bernard, his sermon on the devastations by inger, 113-115
-
- Scholasticism, quiddities of, 33
-
- Schopenhauer, his theory of the will, 127;
- man's responsibility for character alone, 239, 243
-
- Schwabenspiegel, barbarity of this old German code, 178
-
- Schwarz Mining, prosecutor of moles, 112
-
- Schweinfurter Sauhenker, origin of the term, 147
-
- Serpents, destroyed by St. Eldrad, 51;
- freed from poison by St. Hugon, 103
-
- Shakespeare, alludes to "be-rhymed" rats, 130;
- and a wolf on the gallows, 157
-
- Silius Italicus, quoted, 103
-
- Simon, Max, on the morbid spirit of imitation, 253
-
- Sociology, its influence on criminal jurisprudence, 238
-
- Socrates, on self-perfection, 234
-
- Sodomy. _See_ Buggery
-
- Soldan, cited, 17
-
- Sparrows, put under ban by a Protestant parson, 128
-
- Stephen VI., Pope, adjures locusts, 65;
- prosecutes the corpse of his predecessor, 198;
- strangled in prison, 199
-
- Suicide, punishment of the wife and children of a, 190;
- condemned as a crime and also recognized as a right, 191, 192;
- due to manifold influences, 229
-
- Superstition, fostered by bishops and Jesuits, 14
-
- Swallows, anathematized for chattering in church, 28
-
- Swine, execution of, 16, 140-145, 149, 153-157, 161, 169;
- as stenchy beasts peculiarly attractive to devils, 56, 165;
- Gadarene, 69, 91, 165
-
- Swords, tainted, 187
-
-
- Taine, his definition of man, 214
-
- Tarde, defines the mob as a mad beast, 236
-
- Tatian, his fellow-citizen punished for his offences, 180
-
- Tattooing, not peculiar to criminals, 213
-
- Termites, prosecuted by Franciscans in Brazil and praised by their
- defender as more industrious than the friars, 123
-
- Tertullian, quoted, 106
-
- Theognis, his bust punished for murder, 172
-
- Thomas a Becket, his bones burned by Henry VIII., 198
-
- Thomas Aquinas, regarded animals only as diabolical incarnations, 53-55,
- 88, 101, 103
-
- Thurneysser, his bottled scorpions and elk feared as demons, 90
-
- Tithes, importance of the prompt payment of, 37, 94, 107
-
- Tobler, G., on animal prosecutions in Switzerland, 1, 170
-
- Treason, barbarously punished by Roman, Prussian, and Judaic law,
- 179-181
-
- Trench, Richard Chevenix, his justification of the cursing of the
- fig-tree, 25
-
- Treufels, Richard, his belief in the exorcism at Wemding in 1891, 75
-
- Tribunals, proper office of criminal, 211, 232, 248
-
- Tritheim, on Satan's invisible apparition, 166
-
- Tschech, executed, and his innocent daughter exiled for his crime, 179
-
- Tuerler, records the rejection of the Mosaic law by the ecclesiastical
- court of Berne, 170
-
-
- Vampires, superstitions concerning, 195-198
-
- Vendetta, in semi-civilized communities, 178
-
- Venidad, quoted, 63
-
- Ventilation, "bewitched kine" the result of bad, 8
-
- Vermin. _See_ Insects
-
- Virgil, quoted, 26
-
-
- Weevils, prosecuted for damage to vineyards, 38-49
-
- Wemding, recent case of diabolical possession in, 75
-
- Were-wolves, incarnate ghosts, 195;
- decree for their extermination, 198
-
- _Werther_, Goethe's, sentimentalism and suicidism produced by, 253
-
- Winterstetter, Georg, his rescript concerning gadflies, 125
-
- Witches in Judaic and mediaeval law, on a par with animals, 145;
- rendered harmless by burning, 196
-
- Worms, Council of, its decree concerning tainted honey, 9
-
-
- Zarathushtra (Zoroaster), his ethics and its workings, 57-59
-
- Zooepsychology, in its relation to anthropopyschology and criminology,
- 237
-
- Zupetta, on partial vitiation of mind, 201
-
-
-_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] The name is also spelled Chassanee and Chasseneux. In the Middle Ages,
-and even as late as the end of the eighteenth century, the orthography of
-proper names was very uncertain.
-
-[2] "Item: a ete delibere que la ville se joindra aux paroisses de cette
-province qui voudront obtenir de Rome une excommunication contre les
-insects et que l'on contribuera aux frais au pro rata."
-
-[3] These animals are spoken of as _unvernuenftige Thierlein genannt
-Lutmaeuse_. _Lut_ might be derived from the Old German _lut_ (_Laut_,
-Schrei), in which case _Lutmaus_ would mean shrew-mouse; but it is more
-probably from _lutum_ (loam, mould), and signifies mole or field-mouse.
-Field-mice are exceedingly prolific rodents, and in modern as well as in
-mediaeval times have often done grievous harm to husbandry and
-arboriculture by consuming roots and fruits and gnawing the bark of young
-trees. The recklessness of hunters in exterminating foxes, hedgehogs,
-polecats, weasels, buzzards, crows, kites, owls and similar beasts and
-birds, which are destructive of field-mice, has frequently caused the
-latter to multiply so as to become a terrible plague. This was the case in
-England in 1813-14, and in Germany in 1822, and again in 1856.
-
-[4] The first part of this treatise, consisting of seventeen chapters,
-discusses the different kinds of "monitoires" and their applications. Only
-the second part, describing the legal procedure, is here printed.
-
-[5] A few early instances of excommunication and malediction, our
-knowledge of which is derived chiefly from hagiologies and other legendary
-sources, are not included in the present list, such, for example, as the
-cursing and burning of storks at Avignon by St. Agricola in 666, and the
-expulsion of venomous reptiles from the island Reichenau in 728 by Saint
-Perminius.
-
-[6] This case is probably identical with and an adjournment of that of
-1478.
-
-[7] Identical with the sentences covering the period of 1500-1530.
-
-[8] In this latest record of such prosecutions a man named Marger was
-killed and robbed by Scherrer and his son, with the fierce and effective
-co-operation of their dog. The three murderers were tried and the two men
-sentenced to lifelong imprisonment, but the dog, as the chief culprit,
-without whose complicity the crime could not have been committed, was
-condemned to death.
-
-[9] In modern French _pendard_ means hang-dog. M. Lejeune states that he
-can recall no other instance of its use as synonymous with bourreau or
-hangman. Perhaps a facetious clerk may have deemed it applicable to a
-person whose office was in the present case that of a hang-pig.
-
-[10] Under this term are included the dean, canons, and chapter of the
-Cathedral of Chartres.
-
-[11] _Mietkuhe_, a cow pastured or wintered for pay.
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber's Notes:
-
-Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
-
-Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.
-
-The original text includes Greek characters that have been replaced with
-transliterations in this text version.
-
-The original text includes a Maltese Cross symbol that is represented as
-[+] in this text version.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Criminal Prosecution and Capital
-Punishment of Animals, by Edmund P. Evans
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