The Forest Republican. [volume] (Tionesta, Pa.) 1869-1952, 1884-09-24
Animals Before the Law.

Animals Before the Law.
In an article in the atlantic Mmthly
telling how animals were legally punished
in the Middle Ages, the writer says: On
the 10th of January, 1857, SOW was con-
victed of murder, committed on the per-
son of an infant named Jehan Martin, of
Savigny, and sentenced to be hanged.
Her six sucklings were also included in
the indictment as accomplices; but Gin
default 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 completely
in their mothers crime. About a month
later, the sucklings were again brought
before the court; and as their owner,
Jehan Bailly, declined to be answerable
for their future good condnct, they were
declared forfeited to the noble damsel,
Katherine de Barnault Lady of Savigny.
Sometimes fine was imposed upon the
owner of the offending beast, as was the
case with Jehan Delalande and his wife,
condemned on the 18th of April, 1499,
by the Abbey of Josaphat, near Chartres,
to pay eighteen francs ''on account OF
the murder of child named Gillon, aged
five years and half, or thereabouts, COM
mitted by porker aged three months,
or thereabouts. " The porker was changed
and executed by justice"
The records of medieval courts and
the chronicles of medieval cloisters are
full of examples. That such cases usually
came under the jurisdiction of monas-
teries will not seem strange, when we
remember that these religious establish
ments were great landholders, and at
one time owned nearly one-third of all
real estate in France. The frequency
with which pigs were adjudged guilty
of death was owing in great measure to
the freedom with which they were per-
mitted to run about the houses as we'll
as to their immense number. They be-
came serious nuisance, not only as en-
dangering the lives of children, but also
as generating and disseminating dis
eases; so that many cities, like Grenoble
in the sixteenth century, authorized the
carnifex to seize and slay them whenever
found at large.
But although pigs appear to have been
the principal culprits, other quadrupeds
were frequently called to answer for
their crimes. The Judiciary of the Cis-
tercian abbey of Beaupre, in 1899, sent
a bull to the gallows for having "killed
with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
! fifteen years of age;" and in 1889 the
Carthusians at Dijon caused a horse to
| be condemned to death for homicide.
The magistrates of Bale in 1474 sentenced
cock to be burned at the stake for
laying an egg. The Guf CO
| quatri was supposed to be the product of
a very old cock and to furnish the most
active and effective ingredient of witch
ointment. When Matched by a serpent
or by the sun, it brought forth a cocka-
trice, which would hide in the roof of a
house, and, with its baneful breath and
eath-dartingeye, destroy all the in
mates Naturalists believed in this fable
as late as the eighteenth century; and
in 11l0 the French savant, Lapeyronie.
read paper before the Academic des
Sciences to prove that the eggs attributed
to cocks owe their peculiar form to a dis
ease of the hen.
Animals, also, bore their full part OF
persecution during the witchcraft delu.
sion. Pigs suffered most in this respect,
and were assumed to be peculiarly attrac-
tive to devils, and therefore particularly
liable to diabolical possession, as is evi-
dent from the legion that went out OF
the tomb haunting man and were per.
mitted, at their own request, to enter
into the Gadarene herd of swine. In
deed, the greatest theological authority
of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas,
maintained that beasts are but embodi
ments of evil spirits. Chassenee quotes
this opinion, and adds that in eXcom-
municating animals the anathema sis
aimed inferentially at the devil, who
uses irrational creatures to our detri
ment,n Still more recently, a French
Jesuit Pere Bougeant, set forth the same
view in philosophical treatise.