Lawsuits Against Animals. it is said to have been so successful that the leeches began to die off immediately. Martin Azpileneta, too, tells us that in Spain a bishop, standing on the top of a rock over looking the sea, excommunicated the rats, mice, flies, and other similar animals and in sects, who were destroying the harvest and the fruit, and ordered them to leave the coun try in three hours, and that, in compliance with the bishop's injunction, the greater part of the animals concerned, immediately swam to a neighboring uninhabited island, which had been assigned to them, where they could do no harm to anybody. There can be no doubt, however, that the very natural fear that the animals against whom sentence was pronounced might fail to comply with the order of the court was the reason why it was customary to employ all available means of delay in order to avoid actually pronounc ing the exorcism. In some cases, indeed, it is recorded that the noxious animals, after being anathematised, became more numerous and destructive than before, such a result being attributed, of course, to the malevolent interference of Satan. One of the most celebrated lawsuits against animals was that in which Chasseneuz, the Coke of France, was the counsel for the
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"dirty animals in the form of rats, of a grey ish color, living in holes," of the diocese of Autun, about the year 1510. He pleaded in the first instance for delay on the ground that the rats had not been duly summoned. The priest of every parish in the diocese was then ordered to summon them for a future day. This was met by a demand for a further ex tension of time on the ground that the rats had so many preparations to make. Again the delay was granted; and when the date then fixed arrived, Chasseneuz pleaded that his clients were entitled to a safe conduct to the court and back to their homes, and that consequently the owners of the cats in the neighborhood ought to give security for the harmlessness of the feline race. This was, of course, impossible, and the result was that the case was adjourned sine die. Turtle doves were excommunicated in Canada in the seventeenth century, and termites in Brazil and Peru in the eighteenth. Enough, how ever, has probably been said. The eccen tricities of mediaeval judicial procedure are numerous, but this is perhaps one of the greatest, and one can only conclude that our ancestors must have had an abundance of time to waste, if they were willing to spend it on such absurdities.
