Now take the case of a child injured by a sow, or a man killed by a bull: the trial was conducted in precisely the same manner as though sow and bull were morally criminal. They were apprehended, placed before the ordinary tribunal, and given over to execution.
Again: an inroad of locusts or snails takes place. Common law is helpless, it may pronounce judgment, but who is to execute its decrees? Temporal power being palpably unavailing, the spiritual tribunal steps in; the decision of the magistrates being useless, perhaps excommunication may suffice. This, then, was an established maxim. If the criminal could be reached, he was handed over to the ordinary courts of justice; if, however, the matter was beyond their control, he fell within the jurisdiction of Ecclesiastical Courts. Poor culprit, not a loophole left by which to escape!
Let us consider the manner of proceeding under the former circumstance. A bull has caused the death of a man. The brute is seized and incarcerated; a lawyer is appointed to plead for the delinquent; another is counsel for the prosecution. Witnesses are bound over, the case is heard, and sentence is given by the judge, declaring the bull guilty of deliberate and wilful murder; and, accordingly, that it must suffer the penalty of hanging or burning.
The following cases are taken from among numerous others, and will afford examples:
A.D. 1266. A pig burned at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, for having devoured a child.
1386. A judge at Falaise condemned a sow to be mutilated in its leg and head, and then to be hanged, for having lacerated and killed a child. It was executed in the square, dressed in mans clothes. The execution cost six sous, six deniers, and a new pair of gloves for the executioner, that he might come out of the job with clean hands.
1389. A horse tried at Dijon, on information given by the magistrates of Montbar, and condemned to death, for having killed a man.
1499. A bull was condemned to death at Cauroy, near Beauvais, for having in a fury occis a little boy of fourteen or fifteen years old.
A farmer of Moisy let a mad bull escape. The brute met and gored a man so severely that he only survived a few hours. Charles, Count de Valois, having heard of the accident whilst at his château of Crépy, ordered the bull to be seized and committed for trial. This was accordingly done. The officers of the Count de Valois gathered all requisite information, received the affidavits of witnesses, established the guilt of the bull, condemned it to be hanged, and executed it on the gibbet of Moisy-le-Temple. The death of the beast thus expiated that of the man. But matters did not stop here. An appeal against the sentence of the Counts officers was lodged before the Candlemas parliament of 1314 drawn up in the name of the Procureur de lHôpital at Moisy, declaring the officers to have been incompetent judges, having no jurisdiction within the confines of Moisy, and as having attempted to establish a precedent. The parliament received and investigated the appeal, and decided that the condemnation of the bull was perfectly just, but found that the Count de Valois had no judicial rights within the territory of Moisy, and that his officers had acted illegally in taking part in the affair.
Here is a list of the expenses incurred on the occasion of a sows execution for having eaten a child:
The charter of Eleanora, drawn up in 1395, and entitled Carta de logu, containing the complete civil and criminal code for Sardinia, enjoins that oxen and cows, whether wild or domesticated, may be legally killed when they are taken marauding. Asses convicted of similar delinquencies common enough, by the way are treated more humanely. They are considered in the same light as thieves of a higher order in society. The first time that an ass is found in a cultivated field not belonging to its master, one of its ears is cropped. If it commits the same offence again, it loses the second ear; should the culprit be hardened in crime, and inveterate enough to trespass a third time, it is not hanged, does not even lose its tail, but is confiscated to the Crown and goes to swell the royal herd.
During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the guilty animals suffered death on the gallows, and our sires considered that such a punishment must strike terror into the minds of all cattle-owners and jobbers, so as effectually to prevent them from suffering their beasts to stray at large over the country. Later on, however, these capital condemnations were done away with, the proprietor of the animal was condemned to pay damages, and the criminal was killed without trial.
One more specimen, and we shall pass to cases coming under Ecclesiastical Courts.
Country folk believe still that cocks lay eggs. This is an old superstition, people holding, formerly, that from these accursed eggs sprang basilisks, or horrible winged serpents.
Gross relates, in his Petite Chronique de Bâle, that in the month of August 1474, an abandoned and profligate cock of that town was accused of the crime of having laid one of these eggs, and was brought before the magistrates, tried, convicted, and condemned to death.
The court delivered over the culprit to the executioner, who burned it publicly, along with its egg, in a place called Kohlenberger, amidst a great concourse of citizens and peasants assembled to witness such a ludicrous execution.
The poor cock no doubt suffered on account of the belief prevalent at the period that it was in league with the devil. A cock was the offering made by witches at their sabbaths, and as these eggs were reputed to contain snakes reptiles particularly grateful to devils it was taken as a proof of the cock having been engaged in the practice of sorcery.
The annals of Ireland relate that in 1383 a cock was convicted of a similar offence in that island, and that it suffered at the stake; the heat of the flames burst the egg, and there issued forth a serpent-like creature, which, however, perished in the fire.
We shall pass now to the second part of our subject namely, proceedings against snails, flies, mice, moles, ants, caterpillars, etc.
It has frequently happened, in all parts of the world, that an unusual number of vermin have made their appearance and destroyed the garden produce, or that flies have been so abundant as to drive the cattle mad from their bites. In such cases the sufferers had recourse to the Church, which hearkened to their complaints and fulminated her anathema against the culprits. The method of proceeding much resembled that already stated as being in vogue in the ordinary tribunals. The plaintiff appointed counsel, the court accorded a counsel to the defendants, and the ecclesiastical judge summed up and gave sentence.
All requisite forms of law were gone through with precision and minuteness. As a specimen we shall extract some details from a consultation on the subject, made by Bartholomew de Chasseneux, a noted lawyer of the sixteenth century.
After having spoken, in the opening, of the custom among the inhabitants of Beaume of asking the authorities of Autun to excommunicate certain insects larger than flies, vulgarly termed hureburs, a favour which was invariably accorded them, Chasseneux enters on the question whether such a proceeding be right. The subject is divided into five parts, in each of which he exhibits vast erudition.
The lawyer then consoles the inhabitants of Beaunois with the reflection that the scourge which vexes them devastates other countries. In India the hureburs are three feet long, their legs are armed with teeth, which the natives employ as saws. The remedy found most effectual is to make a female in the most dégagé costume conceivable perambulate the canton with bare feet. This method, however, is open to grave objections on the score of decency and public morality.
The lawyer then consoles the inhabitants of Beaunois with the reflection that the scourge which vexes them devastates other countries. In India the hureburs are three feet long, their legs are armed with teeth, which the natives employ as saws. The remedy found most effectual is to make a female in the most dégagé costume conceivable perambulate the canton with bare feet. This method, however, is open to grave objections on the score of decency and public morality.
The advocate then discusses the legality of citing insects before a court of justice. He decides that such a summons is perfectly justifiable. He proceeds to inquire whether they should be expected to attend in person, and, in default of their so doing, whether the prosecution can lawfully be carried on. Chasseneux satisfies himself and us that this is in strict accordance with law.
The sort of tribunal before which the criminals should be cited forms the next subject of inquiry. He decides in favour of the Ecclesiastical Courts. The advocate proceeds to convince his readers, by twelve conclusive arguments, that excommunication of animals is justifiable; having done so, he brings forward a series of examples and precedents. He asserts that a priest once excommunicated an orchard, whither children resorted to eat apples, when naughty chicks! they ought to have been at church. The result was all that could have been desired, for the trees produced no fruit till, at the request of the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, the inhibition was removed.
He mentions, as well, an excommunication fulminated by a bishop against sparrows, which, flying in and out of the church of S. Vincent, left their traces on the seats and desks, and in other ways disturbed the faithful. Saint Bernard, be it remembered, whilst preaching in the parish church of Foligny, was troubled by the incessant humming of the flies. The saint broke off his sermon to exclaim, O flies! I denounce you! The pavement was instantaneously littered with their dead bodies.
Saint Patrick, as every one knows, drove the serpents out of Ireland by his ban.
This is the form of excommunication as given by Chasseneux: O snails, caterpillars, and other obscene creatures, which destroy the food of our neighbours, depart hence! Leave these cantons which you are devastating, and take refuge in those localities where you can injure no one. I. N. P., etc.
Chasseneux obtained such credit from this opinion that, in 1510, he was appointed by the authorities of Autun to be advocate for the rats, and to plead their cause in a trial which was to ensue on account of the devastation they committed in eating the harvest over a large portion of Burgundy.
In his defence, Chasseneux showed that the rats had not received formal notice; and, before proceeding with the case, he obtained a decision that all the priests of the afflicted parishes should announce an adjournment, and summon the defendants to appear on a fixed day.
At the adjourned trial, he complained that the delay accorded his clients had been too short to allow of their appearing, in consequence of the roads being infested with cats. Chasseneux made an able defence, and finally obtained a second adjournment. We believe that no verdict was given.
In a formulary of exorcisms, believed to have been drawn up by S. Gratus, Bishop of Aosta, in the ninth century, we find unclean beasts excommunicated as agents of Satan.
From such a superstition as this sprang the numerous legends of the Evil One having been exorcised into the form of a beast; as, for instance, by S. Taurinus of Evreux, and by S. Walther of Scotland, who died in 1214, and who charmed the devil into the shapes of a black dog, pig, wolf, rat, etc. The devil Rush, in the popular mediæval tale of Fryer Rush, was conjured into a horse, and made to carry enough lead on his back to roof a church.
Felix Malleolus relates that William, Bishop of Lausanne, pronounced sentence against the leeches which infested the Lake of Geneva and killed the fish, and that the said leeches retreated to a locality assigned them by the prelate. The same author relates at large the proceedings instituted against some mosquitoes in the thirteenth century in the Electorate of Mayence, when the judge before whom they were cited granted them, on account of the minuteness of their bodies and their extreme youth, a curator and counsel, who pleaded their cause and obtained for them a piece of land to which they were banished.
On the 17th of August 1487, snails were sentenced at Mâcon. In 1585, caterpillars suffered excommunication in Valence. In the sixteenth century, a Spanish bishop, from the summit of a rock, bade all rats and mice leave his diocese, and betake themselves to an island which he surrendered to them. The vermin obeyed, swimming in vast numbers across the strait to their domain.
In 1694, during the witch persecutions at Salem, in New England, under the Quakers Increase and Cotton Mather, a dog was strangely afflicted, and was found guilty of having been ridden by a warlock. The dog was hanged. Another dog was accused of afflicting others, who fell into fits the moment it looked upon them; it was also put to death. A Canadian bishop in the same century excommunicated the wood-pigeons; the same expedient was had recourse to against caterpillars by a grand vicar of Pont-du-Château, in Auvergne, as late as the eighteenth century.
The absurdity of these trials called forth several treatises during the middle ages. Philip de Beaumanoir in the thirteenth century, in his Customs of Beauvoisis, complained of their folly; and in 1606, Cardinal Duperron forbade any exorcism of animals, or the use, without license, of prayers in church for their extermination.
A book published in 1459, De Fascino, by a Spanish Benedictine monk, Leonard Vair, holds up the practice to ridicule. Eveillon, in his Traité des Excommunications, published in 1651, does the same.
One curious story more, and we shall give a detailed account of one of these trials.
We have taken this from Benoits Histoire de lEdit de Nantes (tom. v. p. 754), and give a translation of the writers own words. The Protestant chapel at La Rochelle was condemned to be demolished in 1685. The bell had a fate sufficiently droll: it was whipped, as a punishment for having assisted heretics; it was then buried, and disinterred, in order to represent its new birth in passing into the hands of Catholics It was catechised, and had to reply; it was compelled to recant, and promise never again to relapse into sin; it then made ample and honourable recompense. Lastly, it was reconciled, baptized, and given to the parish which bears the name of Saint Bartholomew. But the point of the story is, that when the governor, who had sold it to the parish, asked for payment, the answer made him was, that it had been Huguenot, that it had been newly converted, and that consequently it had a right to demand a delay of three years before paying its debts, according to the law passed by the king for the benefit of those recently converted!
We propose now giving the particulars of a remarkable action brought against some ants, towards the commencement of the eighteenth century, for violation of the rights of property. It is related by P. Manoel Bernardes in his Nova Floresta (Lisbóa, 1728), and is quoted by M. Emile Agnel among his Curiosités Judiciaires et Historiques; to whom and to the paper of M. Menabréa, entitled Procès fait aux Animaux, in the twelfth volume of the Transactions of the Chambéry Society, we are indebted for much of our information.