The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals

A faded and somewhat droll survival of ecclesiastical excommunication and exorcism is the custom, still prevailing in European countries and some portions of the United States, of serving a writ of ejectment on rats or simply sending them a friendly letter of advice in order to induce them to quit any house, in which their presence is deemed undesirable. Lest the rats should overlook and thus fail to read the epistle, it is rubbed with grease, so as to attract their attention, rolled up and thrust into their holes. Mr. William Wells Newell, in a paper on “Conjuring Rats,” printed in The Journal of American Folk-Lore (Jan. – March, 1892), gives a specimen of such a letter, dated, “Maine, Oct. 31, 1888,” and addressed in business style to “Messrs. Rats and Co.” The writer begins by expressing his deep interest in the welfare of said rats as well as his fears lest they should find their winter quarters in No. 1, Seaview Street, uncomfortable and poorly supplied with suitable food, since it is only a summer residence and is also about to undergo repairs. He then suggests that they migrate to No. 6, Incubator Street, where they “can live snug and happy” in a splendid cellar well stored with vegetables of all kinds and can pass easily through a shed leading to a barn containing much grain. He concludes by stating that he will do them no harm if they heed his advice, otherwise he shall be forced to use “Rough on Rats.” This threat of resorting to rat poison in case of the refusal to accept his kind counsel is all that remains of the once formidable anathema of the Church.

In Scotland, when these domestic rodents became too troublesome, people of the lower classes are wont to post the following notice on the walls of their houses:

“Ratton and mouse,Lea’ the puir woman’s house,Gang awa’ owre by to ’e mill,And there ane and a’ ye’ll get your fill.”

In order to make the conjuration effective some particular abode must be assigned to them; it is not sufficient to bid them begone, but they are to be told to go to a definite place. The fact that they are usually sent across a river or brook may indicate a lingering tradition of their demoniacal character, since, according to a widespread popular superstition, a water-course is a barrier to hobgoblins and evil spirits:

“A running stream they dare na cross.”

In this case the rats, as imps of Satan, having reached their destination, would find it impossible to return.

It was in Ireland, the native realm of bulls and like incongruities, that conjuring or “rhyming” rats seems to have been most common, if we may judge from the manner in which it is alluded to by the Elizabethan poets. Thus in As you Like It Rosalind says in reference to Orlando’s verses: “I was never so be-rhymed since Pythagoras’ time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember.” Randolph declares:

“My poetsShall with a satire, steep’d in gall and vinegar,Rhime ’em to death, as they do rats in Ireland.”

Ben Jonson is still more specific:

“Rhime ’em to death, as they do Irish rats,In drumming tunes.”

From this reference to the mode of conjuring it appears that the repeating of the rhymes was accompanied with the beating of a drum, as is still the usage in France. From the very earliest times a peculiar magical potency has been ascribed to words woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for the youth of the individual was yet far more strongly felt in the youth of the race. The simple song was intoned as a spell and the rude chant mumbled as a charm.

In France the conjuration of field-mice bears a more distinctly religious stamp. On the first Sunday in Lent, the so-called Feast of the Torches (la Fête des Brandons ou des Bures), the peasants wander in all directions through the fields and orchards with lighted torches of twisted straw, uttering the following incantation, which not only threatens to burn the whiskers of obdurate mice, but also hints at the wine-bibbing propensities of the curate:

“Sortez, sortez d’ici, mulots!Ou je vais vous bruler les crocs!Quittez, quittez ces blés!Allez, vous trouverezDans la cave du curéPlus à boire qu’à manger.”

The form of imprecation varies in different provinces, but usually includes some threat of breaking the bones or burning the beards of the refractory rodents, in case they refuse to quit the close, as in the following summons:

“Taupes et mulots,Sors de mon clos,Ou je te casse les os;Barbassione! Si tu viens dans non clos,Je te brûle la barbe jusqu’aux os.”

The utterance of these words is emphasized by loud and discordant noises of cat-calls, tin horns, and similar instruments of “Callithumpian” music.

Gregory, who was Bishop of Tours in the latter half of the sixth century, states in his History of the Franks (VIII. 35) that bronze talismans representing dormice and serpents were used in Paris to protect the city against the ravages of these creatures; and when the town of Le Mans was rebuilt after its destruction by fire in 1145, a toad with a gold chain round its neck, was enclosed in a block of stone as a preservative against venomous reptiles. (Le Corvasier: Hist, des Évêques du Mans, 1648, p. 441. Cf. Desnoyers: Recherches, etc., p. 7.)

The use of the above-mentioned means of conjuration is unquestionably of very ancient date. Thus in a treatise on agriculture entitled τὰ γεωπονικά and consisting of twenty books, written in the tenth century by the Bithynian Byzantine, Kassianos Bassos, the following prescription is given for getting rid of field-mice:

“Take a slip of paper and write on it these words: I adjure you, O mice, who dwell here not to injure me yourselves nor to permit any other mouse to do so; and I make over to you this field (describing it). But should I find you staying here after having been warned, with the help of the mother of the gods I will cut you in seven pieces.” The author quotes this recipe, in order, as he says, that nothing may remain unrecorded, but expressly declares that he has no confidence in its efficiency and advises the husbandman to put his trust in good rat-bane. Bassos derived the materials for his popular encyclopædia chiefly from the “Geoponics” composed by Anatolios and Didymos some six centuries earlier, and even most of his citations of classical writers are taken from the same sources. That the above-mentioned exorcism is pagan in its origin is evident from the invocation of the aid of Cybele for the destruction of disobedient vermin. In a Christian conjuration the Mother of God would have been substituted for the mother of the gods, whom the Greeks revered as the personification of all-creating and all-sustaining nature. The resemblance of this formula, which the Greeks may have borrowed with the worship of Cybele from the Phrygians, to the Yankee’s letter of advice is peculiarly interesting.

In the ancient conjuration the harmful or undesirable animals were commanded to go to a certain locality, set apart for them, and this injunction was accompanied with dire threats in case of disobedience; the milder epistolary form of the present day is more advisory and persuasive and offers them inducements to migrate and to take up their abode elsewhere. Sometimes this kind counsel is given verbally, as, for example, in Thuringia, where it is customary to get rid of cabbage-worms by going into the garden, requesting them to depart, and calling out: “In yonder village is church-ale (Kirmes)”; thus implying that they will find better entertainment at this festival. (Witzschel: Sagen, Sitten und Gebräuche aus Thüringen. Wien, 1878, p. 217.) The willingness of peasant communities to ward off evil from themselves at the expense of their neighbours is a survival of the primitive ethics, which recognizes only the rights of the family or tribe and treats all aliens as foes. It is the same feeling that causes the inhabitants of the Alps to erect so-called weather-crosses (Wetterkreuze) for the purpose of averting thunder-storms and hailstones from themselves by diverting them into an adjacent valley. This method of protection is based upon the theory that tempests, hurricanes, and all violent commotions of nature are the work of demons or witches, who avoid the symbol of Christ’s death and the world’s redemption and direct their fury elsewhere. A like egotism is expressed in the inscription on many houses of peasants entreating St. Florian to preserve their habitation from flames and to set fire to others, as though the holy man must indulge his incendiary passion by pouring out upon some human abode the blazing vessel, which he is represented as bearing in his hand. The inscription is the same as that with which Reynard the Fox adorned his castle Malepartus, and which might be translated:

“Saint Florian, thou martyr blessed,Protect this house and burn the rest.”

Not only were insects, reptiles and small mammals, such as rats and mice, legally prosecuted and formally excommunicated, but judicial penalties, including capital punishment, were also inflicted upon larger quadrupeds. In the Report and Researches on this subject, published by Berriat-Saint-Prix in the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of France (Paris, 1829, Tome VIII. pp. 403-50), numerous extracts from the original records of such proceedings are given, and also a list of the kinds of animals thus tried and condemned, extending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the eighteenth century, and comprising in all ninety-three cases. This list has been enlarged by D’Addosio so as to cover the period from 824 to 1845, and to include one hundred and forty-four prosecutions resulting in the execution or excommunication of the accused, but even this record is by no means complete. (Vide Appendix F for a still fuller list.)

The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars, flies, locusts, leeches, snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice, moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, mares and goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were found guilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers, two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to the twelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to the fifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth, seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this list might be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction of noxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711, at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega in Slavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts was seized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water with anathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locusts devastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sent by the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them to bear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius, in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as the locusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing left for them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to the humblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a miracle had been wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and other harmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as was recently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also as late as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed for having maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year. The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to the dogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the custom of pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to provide a dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might not prove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (Amira, p. 578.) It would be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that no judicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addicted to such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkest periods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of the courts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives have been entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the cases of capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have been collected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thorough their investigations may have been, constitute only a very small percentage of those which actually took place.

Beasts were often condemned to be burned alive; and strangely enough, it was in the latter half of the seventeenth century, an age of comparative enlightenment, that this cruel penalty seems to have been most frequently inflicted. Occasionally a merciful judge adhered to the letter of the law and curbed its barbarous spirit by sentencing the culprit to be slightly singed and then to be strangled before being committed to the flames. Sometimes brutes were doomed to be buried alive. Thus we have the receipt of “Phélippart, sergeant of high justice of the city of Amiens,” for the sum of sixteen soldi, in payment for services rendered in March 1463, in “having buried in the earth two pigs, which had torn and eaten with their teeth a little child in the faubourg of Amiens, who for this cause passed from life to death (étoit allé de vie a trépas).” In 1557, on the 6th of December, a pig in the Commune of Saint-Quentin was condemned to be “buried all alive” (enfoui tout vif), “for having devoured a little child in l’hostel de la Couronne.” Again, a century earlier, in 1456, two pigs were subjected to this punishment, “on the vigil of the Holy Virgin,” at Oppenheim on the Rhine, for having killed a child. More than three centuries later the same means were employed for curing murrain, which in the summer of 1796 had broken out at Beutelsbach in Würtemberg and carried off many head of cattle. By the advice of a French veterinary doctor, who was quartered there with the army of General Moreau, the town bull was buried alive at the crossroads in the presence of several hundred persons. We are not informed whether this sacrifice proved to be a sufficiently “powerful medicine” to stay the epizoötic plague; the noteworthy fact is that the superstitious rite was prescribed and performed, not by an Indian magician or an African sorcerer, but by an official of the French republic.

Animals are said to have been even put to the rack in order to extort confession. It is not to be supposed that, in such cases, the judge had the slightest expectation that any confession would be made; he wished merely to observe all forms prescribed by the law, and to set in motion the whole machinery of justice before pronouncing judgment. The statement of a French writer, Arthur Mangin (L’Homme et la Bête. Paris, 1872, p. 344), that “the cries which they uttered under torture were received as confessions of guilt,” is absurd. No such notion was ever entertained by their tormentor. “The question,” which under the circumstances would seem to be only a wanton and superfluous act of cruelty, was nevertheless an important element in determining the final decision, since the sentence of death could be commuted into banishment, whipping, incarceration or some milder form of punishment, provided the criminal had not confessed his guilt under torture. The use of the rack might be, therefore, a merciful means of escaping the gallows. Appeals were sometimes made to higher tribunals and the judgments of the lower courts annulled or modified. In one instance a sow and a she-ass were condemned to be hanged; on appeal, and after a new trial, they were sentenced to be simply knocked on the head. Occasionally an appeal led to the acquittal of the accused.

In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have a strict application of the lex talionis, the primitive retributive principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man’s clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public functionary, a “master of high works” (maître des hautes œuvres), as he was officially styled. (Vide Appendix G.)

We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the Church of the Holy Trinity (Sainte-Trinité) at Falaise in Normandy was formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is mentioned in Statistique de Falaise (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully described by l’Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his Recherches Historiques sur Falaise (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work, published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820, the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained, no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too, as the same writer informs us, la châsse de la bannière (banner-holder) was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.

In 1394, a pig was found guilty of “having killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant of the bailiff.” The work was really done by the hangman (pendart), Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of “fifty souls tournois.” (Vide Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration and execution of an infanticide sow:

“Cost of keeping her in jail, six sols parisis.

“Item, to the master of high works, who came from Paris to Meullant to perform the said execution by comand and authority of the said bailiff, our master, and of the procurator of the king, fifty-four sols parisis.

“Item, for a carriage to take her to justice, six sols parisis.

“Item, for cords to bind and hale her, two sols eight deniers parisis.

“Item, for gloves, two deniers parisis.”

This account, which amounted in all to sixty-nine sols eight deniers parisis, was examined and approved by the auditor of the court, De Baudemont, who affixed to it his own seal with signature and paraph and “in further confirmation and approbation thereof caused it to be sealed with the seal of the Chatellany of Meullant, on the 15th day of March in the year 1403.” (See Appendix I.) In the following year a pig was executed at Rouvres for the same offence.

Brutes and human criminals were confined in the same prison and subjected to the same treatment. Thus “Toustain Pincheon, keeper of the prisons of our lord the king in the town of Pont de Larche,” acknowledges the receipt, “through the hand of the honourable and wise man, Jehan Monnet, sheriff (vicomte) of the said town, of nineteen sous six deniers tournois for having found the king’s bread for the prisoners detained, by reason of crime, in the said prison.” The jailer gives the names of the persons in custody, and concludes the list with “Item, one pig, conducted into the said prison and kept there from the 24th of June, 1408, inclusive, till the 17th of the following July,” when it was hanged “for the crime of having murdered and killed a little child” (pource que icellui porc avoit muldry et tue ung pettit enfant). For the pig’s board the jailer charged two deniers tournois a day, the same as for boarding a man, thus placing the porker, even in respect to its maintenance, on a footing of perfect equality with the human prisoners. He also puts into the account “ten deniers tournois for a rope, found and furnished for the purpose of tying the said pig that it might not escape.” The correctness of the charges is certified to by “Jean Gaulvant, sworn tabellion of our lord the king in the viscounty of Pont de Larche.” (Vide Appendix J.) Again in 1474, the official of the Bishop of Lausanne sentenced a pig to be hanged “until death ensueth,” for having devoured an infant in its cradle in the vicinity of Oron, and to remain suspended from the gallows for a certain length of time as a warning to wrong-doers. It is also expressly stated that, in 1585, the body of a pig, which had been executed for the murder of a child at Saint-Omer, at the hostelry of Mortier d’Or, was left hanging “for a long space” on a gibbet in a field near the highway. (Derheims: Histoire de Saint-Omer, p. 327.) A little later a similar spectacle met the eyes of Guy Pape, as he was going to Châlons-sur-Marne in Champagne, to pay homage to King Henry IV. In his own words: dum ibam ad civitatem Cathalani in Campania ad Regem tunc ibi existentem, vidi quemdam porcum, in furcis suspensum, qui dicebatur occidisse quemdam puerum. (Quaestio CCXXXVIII: De poena bruti delinquentis. Lugduni, MDCX.)

On the 5th of September, 1379, as two herds of swine, one belonging to the commune and the other to the priory of Saint-Marcel-le-Jeussey, were feeding together near that town, three sows of the communal herd, excited and enraged by the squealing of one of the porklings, rushed upon Perrinot Muet, the son of the swinekeeper, and before his father could come to his rescue, threw him to the ground and so severely injured him that he died soon afterwards. The three sows, after due process of law, were condemned to death; and as both the herds had hastened to the scene of the murder and by their cries and aggressive actions showed that they approved of the assault, and were ready and even eager to become participes criminis, they were arrested as accomplices and sentenced by the court to suffer the same penalty. But the prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, not willing to endure the loss of his swine, sent an humble petition to Philip the Bold, then Duke of Burgundy, praying that both the herds, with the exception of the three sows actually guilty of the murder, might receive a full and free pardon. The duke lent a gracious ear to this supplication and ordered that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released. (Vide Appendix K.)

A peculiar custom is referred to in the procès verbal of the prosecution of a porker for infanticide, dated May 20, 1572. The murder was committed within the jurisdiction of the monastery of Moyen-Montier, where the case was tried and the accused sentenced to be “hanged and strangled on a gibbet.” The prisoner was then bound with a cord and conducted to a cross near the cemetery, where it was formally given over to an executioner from Nancy. “From time immemorial,” we are told, “the justiciary of the Lord Abbot of Moyen-Montier has been accustomed to consign to the provost of Saint-Diez, near this cross, condemned criminals, wholly naked, that they may be executed; but inasmuch as this pig is a brute beast, he has delivered the same bound with a cord, without prejudicing or in any wise impairing the right of the Lord Abbot to deliver condemned criminals wholly naked.” The pig must not wear a rope unless the right to do without it be expressly reserved, lest some human culprit, under similar circumstances, should claim to be entitled to raiment.

“’Twill be recorded for a precedent;And many an error, by the same exampleWill rush into the state: it cannot be.”

In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious and inclined to kick (vitiosus et calcitrosus), the executioner cut off its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his Rerum Criminalium Praxis (cap. de carnifice, p. 234), urges magistrates to be more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to choose evil-doers, “assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers, and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice.” Indeed, these hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow, which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter’s child, was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority, took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there “hanged it publicly to the disgrace and detriment of the city.” For this impudent usurpation of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return. Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited the public wrath and official indignation.