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
It is rather odd that Christian law-givers should have adopted a Jewish
code against sexual intercourse with beasts and then enlarged it so as to
include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by
jurists, whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess or _vice versa_
constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (_Prax. Rer. Crim._ c., 96, n. 48) is of the
opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis., 136, n. 5) cites the case
of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard, who kept a Jewess in his
house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy
on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, “since
coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate
with a dog” (Döpl., _Theat._, II. p. 157). Damhouder, in the work just
cited, includes Turks and Saracens in the same category, “inasmuch as such
persons in the eye of the law and our holy faith differ in no wise from
beasts.”
But to resume the subject of the perpetration of felonious homicide by
animals, on the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was convicted of “murder
flagrantly committed on the person of Jehan Martin, aged five years, the
son of Jehan Martin of Savigny,” and sentenced to be “hanged by the hind
feet to a gallows-tree (_a ung arbre esproné_).” Her six sucklings, being
found stained with blood, were included in the indictment as accomplices;
but “in lack 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 complicity in their mother’s crime.” Above three weeks later,
on the 2nd of February, to wit “on the Friday after the feast of Our Lady
the Virgin,” the sucklings were again brought before the court; and, as
their owner, Jehan Bailly, openly repudiated them and refused to be
answerable in any wise for their future good conduct, they were declared,
as vacant property, forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault,
Lady of Savigny. This case is particularly interesting on account of the
completeness with which the _procès verbal_ has been preserved. (See
Appendix M.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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