The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1884-08-22
Animals Before the Law,

telling how animals were legally punished
In the Middle Ages, the writer says; ON
the 10th of January, 1857, a 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 stockings were also included in
the indictment as accomplices but Sin
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 fol-
their appearance should further evidence
be forthcoming to prove their completely
in their mothers crime. About a month
later, the stockings were again brought
before the court; and as their owner,
Jehan Bailly, declined to be answerable
fof their future good condnct, they were
declared forfeited to the noble damsel,
Katherine de Barnault, Lady of Savigny.
Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the
owner of the offending beast, as was the
case with Jehan Dealande and his wife,
condemned on the 18th of April, 1899,
by the Abbey of Josaphat near Chartres,
to pay eighteen francs ION account OF
the murder of child named Gillon, aged
five years and a half, or Whereabouts, 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 adjudgcd guilty
of death was owing in great measure to
the freedom with which they were per-
mittcd to run about the houses as we'll
as to their immen.e 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 STAY 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-
tcrcian abbey of Bcaupre, in 1899, sent
a bull to the gallows for having "killed
with furiosity a lad of fourteen or
fifteen years Of age and in 1899 the
Carthusians at Dion caused horse to
be condemned to death for homicide.
The magistrates of Bale in l414 sentenced
a cock to be burned at the stake fol
the heinous and unnatural crime OF
LAYING an egg, The 9uf co
quatri W supposed to be the product OF
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 cocka
trice, which would hide in the roof of {
house, and, with its baneful breath anC
death darling eye" destroy all the in
mates. Naturalists believed in this fabl,
as late as the eighteenth century; anC
in 1910 the French sayant, Lapeyronie
read a paper before the Academic de
Sciences to prove that the eggs attributed
to cocks owe their peculiar form to dis
case of the hen.
Animals, also, bore their full part o
persecution during the witchcraft delu
sion. Pigs suffered most in this respect
and were assumed to be peculiarly attrac
| 1--WE 10 ucNlls, anu lhclclolc ldltlSul1li
liable to diabolical possession, as is evi
dent from the legion that went out o
the tomb haunting man and were per
mtted, at their own request, to ente
into the Gadarene herd of swine. In
deed, the greatest theological authOrit.
of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas
maintained that beasts are bat embodi
ments of evil spirits. Chassenee quote
this opinion, and adds that in eXcom
municating animals the anathema ii
, aimed inferentially at the devil, VIII
uses irrational creatures to our detri
: ment" Still more recently, FrcncI
} Jesuit, Pere Bougeant, set forth the SAM
r view in philosophical treatise.