The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-08-22
Bugs and Beasts Before the Law.


On the 10th OF January, 1857. SOW
was convicted of murder, committed on
the person of an infant named Jehan
Martin, of Savigny, and sentenced to be
hanged. Her sick stockings were also
included in the Indictment as accom-
plices; but ''in 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, con the
Friday after the feast of the Purihca-
ton Of the Virgin, the Stockings were
again brought before the court; and as
their owner, Jehan Bailly, declined to
be answerable for their future good
conduct, they were declared forfeited
to the noble damsel, Katherine de Bar
nault, Lady of Savigny. Sometimes a
fine was imposed upon the owner of the
offending beast, as was the case with
Jehan Delalande and his wife, CON
demned on the 18th Of April, 1899, by
the Abbey of Josaphat, near Chartres,
to pay eighteen francs sson account of
the murder of child named Gillon,
aged five years and half, or there
abouts, committed by a 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 estab-
lishments were great landholders, and
at one time owned nearly oney-third of
all real estate in France The FREE.
quency with which pigs were adjudged
to death was owing in great measure to
the freedom with which they were per-
mitted to run about the houses as well
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
diseases; so that many cities, like
Grenoble in the sixteenth century, all
thorized the carnifex to sieze and slay
them whenever found at large.
But although pigs appear to hay
been the principal culprits, other quad
rupeds were frequently called to answer
for their crimes. The judiciary
of the Cistercian Abbey of Beaupre in
1899, sent q bull to the gallows for hav-
ing ''killed with furiosity lad of four
teen or fifteen years of age" and in
1889 the Carthusians at Dion caused a
horse to be condemned to death for
homicide. The magistrates of Bale, in
1474, sentenced a cock to be burned at
| the stake for the heinous and
unnatural crime of laying an
egg. The euf coquatri was sup
posed to be the product of a very
old cock and to furnish the most active
and effective Ingredient of witch ONT
ment. When Matched by a serpent or
by the sun, it brought forth a cock
atrice, which would hide in the roof of
a house, and, with its baneful breath
and "death-darting eye,' destroy all
| the inmates Naturalists believed in
this fable as late as the eighteenth
century; and in ITO the French sayant
Lapeyronie read a paper before the
Academic des Sciences to prove that
the eggs attributed to cocks owe their
peculiar form to disease of the hen.
Animals, also, bore their full part OF
persecution during the witchcraft de-
! fusion. Pigs suffered most in this re-
| spect, and were assumed TO be Pc
culiarly attractive to devils, and, there
fore, particularly liable to diabolical
possession, as is evident from the legion
that went out of the tomb-haunting
man and were permitted. at their own
request, to enter into the Gadarene herd
of swine. Indeed, the greatest theo-
logical authority of the Middle Ages,
Thomas Aquinas, maintained that
beasts are but embodiments of evil
spirits. Chassenee quotes this opinion,
and adds that in communicating ami
mails the anathema lis aimed inferen-
TALLY at the devil, who uses irrational
creatures to our detriment. Still
more recently, French Jesuit, Pere
Bougeant, set forth the same view in a
philosophical treatise. - atlantic Month
] In