The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of AnimalsEvans, E. P. (Edward Payson)
History
The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals
Evans, E. P. (Edward Payson)
Animals -- Law and legislation -- History; Animals, Prosecution and punishment of -- History; Trials -- Europe
Again in 1345, in the town of Lewin, a potter’s wife, who was reputed to
be a witch, died and, owing to suspicions of her pact with Satan, was
refused burial in consecrated ground and dumped into a ditch like a dog.
The event proved that she was not a good Christian, for instead of
remaining quietly in her grave, such as it was, she roamed about in the
form of divers unclean beasts, causing much terror and slaying sundry
persons. Thereupon she was exhumed and it was found that she had chewed
and swallowed one half of her face-cloth, which, on being pulled out of
her throat, showed stains of blood. A stake was driven through her breast,
but this precautionary measure only made matters worse. She now walked
abroad with the stake in her hand and killed quite a number of people with
this formidable weapon. She was then taken up a second time and burned,
whereupon she ceased from troubling. The efficacy of this post-mortem
_auto da fé_ was accepted as conclusive proof that her neighbours had
neglected to perform their whole religious duty in not having burned her
when she was alive, and were thus punished for their remissness.
Döpler cites also the case of Stephen Hübner of Trautenau, who wandered
about after death as a vampire, frightening and strangling several
individuals. By order of the court his body was disinterred and
decapitated under the gallows-tree. When his head was struck off, a stream
of blood spurted forth, although he had been already five months buried.
His remains were reduced to ashes and nothing more was heard of him.
In 1573, the parliament of Dôle published a decree permitting the
inhabitants of the Franche Comté to pursue and kill a were-wolf or
loup-garou, which infested that province; “notwithstanding the existing
laws concerning the chase,” the people were empowered to “assemble with
javelins, halberds, pikes, arquebuses and clubs to hunt and pursue the
said were-wolf in all places, where they could find it, and to take, bind
and kill it, without incurring any fine or other penalty.” The hunt seems
to have been successful, if we may judge from the fact that the same
tribunal in the following year (1574) condemned to be burned a man named
Gilles Garnier, who ran on all fours in the forest and fields and devoured
little children “even on Friday.” The poor lycanthrope, it appears, had as
slight respect for ecclesiastical fasts as the French pig already
mentioned, which was not restrained by any feeling of piety from eating
infants on a _jour maigre_.
Henry VIII. of England summoned Thomas à Becket to appear before the Star
Chamber to answer for his crimes and then had him condemned as a traitor,
and his bones, that had been nearly four centuries in the tomb and
worshipped as holy relics by countless pilgrims, burned and scattered to
the winds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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