CRIMINALITY IN ANIMALS. 247 



For a long time they had the same rights. During the middle ages 

 they were allowed a part in religious ceremonies. At Milan they fig- 

 ured in the festivals of the kings ; and processions of animals appear 

 in the bas-reliefs of the cathedrals of Strasburg, Mans, and Vienne 

 (Isere). On Holy Wednesday all the clergy of the church of Bheims 

 went to Saint Remi to make a station there ; the canons, preceded by 

 the cross, were arranged in two lines, each drawing a herring after 

 him with a cord ; and each one was intent upon saving his own fish, 

 and stepping upon that of the canon in front of him (Anquetil, " His- 

 toire de Reims "). At Paris, the procession of the fox was as much 

 enjoyed as the festival of the ass. The animal, dressed in a kind of 

 surplice, wearing the mitre, had his place in the midst of the clergy : 

 a fowl was put within his reach ; he often forgot his pious functions 

 to spring upon the bird and devour it in the presence of the faithful. 

 Philip the Fair was very fond of this procession (Sanval, " Antiquites 

 de Paris "). Only a few years ago, the procession of the fat ox re- 

 mained, a survival from the pagan feasts, a real piece of wreckage 

 from vanished civilizations. 



While the rights of animals were thus recognized, their duties 

 toward man did not escape the earlier legislators, who severely pun- 

 ished their crimes and attempts upon human life. The law of Moses 

 (Exodus xxi, 28, 29) recites : " If an ox gore a man or a woman, that 

 they die : then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be 

 eaten ; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were 

 wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to 

 his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man 

 or a woman ; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put 

 to death." 



Judgments based on this principle are recorded at Athens and 

 Rome. According to Pierquin, Democritus wished an animal, which 

 had occasioned some major damage, to be punished with death. Un- 

 der Domitian, according to the report of Martial, the ingratitude of a 

 lion toward its master was severely punished. Columella and Varro 

 say that the ancient Romans regarded the ox as the companion of the 

 labors of man, and that the act of killing one was regarded as a homi- 

 cide and punished in the same way ; and the ox enjoyed the same 

 privilege in Attica and the Peloponnesus. It is also said that the 

 Arabs in the mountains of Africa formerly crucified lions, guilty of 

 murders, upon trees, as warnings to others. 



In the middle ages they prosecuted animals which committed mur- 

 der, those which had become dangerous to have at large, and females 

 which, having given birth to monsters, were suspected of criminal co- 

 habitations. Pere Theophile Raynaud, Ayrault, Gaspard Bailly, and 

 more recently M. Benoist Saint-Prix and M. Louandre (" Epopee des 

 Animaux," " Revue des Deux Mondes," 1854), have cited some ex- 

 tremely curious examples of such condemnations. 



