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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 thelatter as civil suits—Inconsistent attitude of the Church in excommunicating animals—Causal relation of crimeto demoniacal possession—Squatter sovereignty of devils—Aura corrumpens—Diabolical infestation and lackof ventilation—“Bewitched kine”—Greek furies and Christian demons—Homicidal bees, laying cocks andcrowing hens—Theory of the personification of animals—Beasts in Frankish, Welsh, and old German laws—Animalprosecutions and witchcraft—The Mosaic code in Christian courts—Pagan deities as demons—Bornmalefactors 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 ascounsel in other cases of this kind—His dissertation on the subject—Nature of his argument—Authorities andprecedents—The withering of the fig-tree at Bethany justified and explained by Dr. Trench—Eels and blood-suckersin Lake Leman cursed by the Bishop of Lausanne with the approval of Heidelberg theologians—Whitebread turned black, and swallows, fish, and fliesdestroyed by anathema—St. Pirminius expels reptiles—Vermifugal efficacy of St. Magnus’ crosier—Papalexecratories—Animals regarded by the law as lay persons, and not entitled to benefit of clergy—Methodsof procedure—Jurisdiction of the courts—Records of judicial proceedings against insects—Important trial ofweevils at St. Jean-de-Maurienne extending over more than eight months—Untenableness of Ménebréa’s theory—Summaryof the pleadings—Futile attempts at compromise—Final decision doubtful—St. Eldrad and thesnakes—Views of Thomas Aquinas—Distinction between excommunication and anathema—“Sweet beastsand stenchy beasts”—Animals as incarnations of devils—Their diabolical character assumed in papal formulafor blessing water to kill vermin—Amusing treatise by Père Bougeant on this subject—All animals animated bydevils, and all pagans and unbaptized persons possessed with them—Demons the real causes of diseases—FatherLohbauer’s prescription in such cases—Formula of exorcism issued by Leo XIII.—Recent instances ofdemoniacal possession—Hoppe’s psychological explanation of them—Charcot on faith-cures—Why not the dutyof the Catholic Church to inculcate kindness to animals—Zoölatry a form of demonolatry—Gnats especiallydangerous devils—Bodelschwingh’s discovery of the bacillus infernalis—Gaspard Bailly’s disquisition withspecimens of plaints, pleas, etc.—Ayrault protests against such proceedings—Hemmerlein’s treatise on exorcisms—Criminalprosecution of field-mice—Vermin excommunicated by the Bishop of Lausanne—Protocol ofjudicial proceedings against caterpillars—Conjurers of cabbage-worms—Swallows proscribed by a Protestantparson—Custom of writing letters of advice to rats—Writs of ejectment served on them—Rhyming ratsin Ireland—Ancient usage mentioned by Kassianos Bassos—Capital punishment of larger quadrupeds—Berriat-Saint-Prix’sReports and Researches—List of culprits—Beasts burned and buried alive and put to therack—Swine executed for infanticide—Bailly’s bill of expenses—An ox decapitated for its demerits—Punishmentof buggery—Cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess declared to be sodomy—Trial of a sow and sixsucklings for murder—Bull sent to the gallows forkilling a lad—A horse condemned to death for homicide—A cock burned at the stake for the unnatural crime oflaying 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 inHebrew legislation—Flesh of a culprit pig not to be eaten—Athenian laws for punishing inanimate objects—Recentexecution of idols in China—Russian bell sentenced to perpetual exile in Siberia for abetting insurrection—Pilloryfor 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 ofsuch penalties for political offences—Survival of this conception of justice in theology—Constitutio CriminalisCarolina—Lombroso opposed to trial by jury as a relic of barbarism—Corruption of Swiss cantonal courts—Deodandin English law—Applications of it in Maryland and in Scotland—Blackstone’s theory of it untenable—Penaltiesinflicted 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 theintricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to untie—Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law—Restlessghosts of criminals who died unpunished—Execution of vampires and were-wolves—Case of a were-wolfwho devoured little children “even on Friday”—Pope Stephen VI. brings the corpse of his predecessorto trial—Mediæval and modern conceptions of culpability—Problems of psycho-pathological jurisprudence—Degreesof mental vitiation—Italians pioneers in the scientific study of criminality—Effects of these speculationsupon legislation—Barbarity of mediæval penal justice—Gradual abolition of judicial torture—Cruelsentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo—“Blue Laws”a great advance on contemporary English penal codes—Moral and penal responsibility—Atavism and criminality—Physicalabnormities—Capacity and symmetry of the skull—Circumvolutions of the brain—Tattooing not apeculiarity of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense—Theories of the origin and nature ofcrime—Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the encephalon—Remarkable exceptions inGambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo—Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the penalcodes of to-day—Measures proposed by Lombroso and his school—Their conclusions not sustained by facts—Crimethrough hypnotic suggestion—Difficulty of defining insanity—Coleridge’s definition too inclusive—Predestinationand evolution—Criminality among the lower animals—Punishment preventive or retributive—Schopenhauer’sdoctrine 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 peculiarlystrong 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]