Bugs and Beasts before the Law. In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive at Montpellier, in 1565, as the animal was vicious and kicky the execu tioner cut off its feet before consigning it to the flames, This mutilation was an arbi trary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of personal convenience. Hangmen were often guilty of superogatory cruelty in the exercise of their bloody func tions. Writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his " Rerum Criminalium Praxis," urges magistrates to be more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to choose notor ious violators of the law as vindicators of justice. Indeed, these hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. Thus, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt, in Franconia, a sow, which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a child, was given in custody to the hang man, who, without further authority, took it to the gallows green and there " hanged it publicly, to the disgrace and detriment of the city." For this imprudent usurpation of judiciary powers, Jack Ketch was obliged to flee, and never dared return. On the 10th of January, 1457, a sow was 'convicted of murder, committed on the per son of an infant named Jehan Martin, of Savigny, and sentenced to be hanged. Her six sucklings were also included in the indict ment, as accomplices; but " in default 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 fortheoming to prove their com plicity in their mother's crime." About a month later, " on the Friday after the feast of,the Purification of the Virgin," the suck lings were again brought before the court; and as their owner, Jehan Bailly, declined to be answerable for their future good con duct, they were declared forfeited to the noble damsel Katherine de Barnault, Lady
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of Savigny. Sometimes a fine was imposed upon the owner of the offending beast, as was the case with Jehan Delalande and his wife, condemned on the 18th of April, 1499, by the Abbey of Josaphat, near Chartres, to pay eighteen francs " on account of the murder of a child named Gillon, aged five years and a half or thereabouts, committed by a porker, aged three months or there abouts." The porker was " hanged and executed by justice." Nothing would be easier than to multiply examples of this kind. The records of mediaeval courts and the chronicles of me diaeval cloisters are full of them. That such cases usually come under the jurisdiction of monasteries will not seem strange, when we remember that these religious estab lishments were great landholders, and at one time owned nearly one third of all real estate in France. The frequency with which pigs were adjudged to death was owing in great measure to the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the houses as well as to their immense number. They became a serious nuisance, not only as en dangering the lives of children, but also as generating and disseminating diseases; so that many cities, like Grenoble in the six teenth century, authorized the carnifex to seize and slay them whenever found at large. Sanitary measures of this kind were not common in the Middle Ages, but were an outgrowth of the Renaissance. It was with the revival of letters that men began again to love cleanliness and to appreciate its hygienic value. Little heed was paid to such things in the " good old times " of earlier date, when the test of holiness was the number of years a person went un washed, and the growth of the soul in sanctity was estimated by the layers of filth on the body, as the age of the earth is de termined by the strata which compose its crust. Put although pigs appear to have been the principal culprits, other quadrupeds were
