PUNISHMENT BY MAN 361 



animals or tlieir offences gave rise. The ingratitude 

 of the lion was punished. The ox was regarded as man's 

 fellow- workman and equal, as deserving similar blame and 

 similar respect, according to circumstances. 



In the Middle Ages, especially in France, in or about 

 the fifteenth century, the judicial punishments of the lower 

 animals, as described by Pierquin, were both frequent and 

 singular. In some cases there was formal arrest of the ani- 

 mal-culprit or a formal summons to court followed by 

 accusation, conviction, condemnation, and execution of the 

 sentence ; the whole judicial proceedings being held in the 

 same courts and guided by the same legal authorities as were 

 the criminal trials of man. There was regular pleading and 

 defence, an official advocate being appointed, from a whim- 

 sical sense of justice, by the court on behalf of the accused 

 animal. It was his duty to defend the prisoner at the bar. 

 But while we hear of many convictions, we have not been 

 made aware of any acquittals. Indeed it is to be feared that 

 condemnation was a foregone conclusion, and the whole pro- 

 ceedings a judicial farce. 



Nor was the farce confined to legal courts. Quite as 

 frequently animal criminality came for trial and condemnation 

 before ecclesiastical courts, so that, while the legal courts pro- 

 nounced sentence of death by the gibbet, the ecclesiastical 

 courts fulminated their anathemas and issued their letters of 

 excommunication or proscription, uttered their imprecations, 

 or merely and mildly administered censure. Both classes of 

 courts had their laws and ordinances specially applicable to 

 animal crimes and criminals ; both issued their edicts with 

 all the pomp and usage of the day proper to human trials. 



The animals accused and punished, the crimes of which 

 they were accused, and the forms of punishment adminis- 

 tered, were alike curiously varied. The animals included the 

 bull, cow, dog, cat, horse, swine, rabbits, geese, cocks, pigeons, 

 and even caterpillars. The offences with which they were 

 charged were usually the causing fatal injury or accident to 

 man, endangering his personal safety, destroying his pro- 

 perty, or disobedience and insubordination. In France, a 

 cock was charged with and punished for sedition. Bulls, 



