MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY
Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence--
Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the
intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to
untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless
ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of
vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured
little children “even on Friday”--Pope Stephen VI. brings
the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern
conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological
jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians
pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of
these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval
penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel
sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--“Blue Laws” a great
advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and penal
responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical
abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull--
Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity of
criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense--
Theories of the origin and nature of crime--Intelligence not
always to be measured by the size of the encephalon--
Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo
Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the
penal codes of to-day--Measures proposed by Lombroso and his
school--Their conclusions not sustained by facts--Crime
through hypnotic suggestion--Difficulty of defining
insanity--Coleridge’s definition too inclusive--
Predestination and evolution--Criminality among the lower
animals--Punishment preventive or retributive--
Schopenhauer’s doctrine of responsibility for character--
Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie
Jeanneret--“Method in Madness” not uncommon--Social safety
the supreme law--Application of this principle to
“Cranks”--Spirit of imitation peculiarly strong in such
classes--Contagiousness of crime--Criminology now in a
period of transition _p._ 193
APPENDIX
A. De Actis Scindicorum Communitatis Sancti Julliani
agentium contra Animalia Bruta ad formam muscarum volantia
coloris viridis communi voce appellata Verpillions seu
Amblevins _p._ 259
B. Traite des Monitoires avec un Plaidoyer contre les
Insectes par Spectable Gaspard Bailly _p._ 287
C. Allegation, Replication, and Judgment in the process
against field-mice at Stelvio in 1519 _p._ 307
D. Admonition, Denunciation, and Citation of the Inger by
the Priest Bernhard Schmid in the name and by the authority
of the Bishop of Lausanne in 1478 _p._ 309
E. Decree of Augustus, Duke of Saxony and Elector,
commending the action of Parson Greysser in putting the
sparrows under ban, issued at Dresden in 1559 _p._ 311
F. Chronological List of Excommunications and Prosecutions
of Animals from the ninth to the nineteenth century _p._ 313
G. Receipt, dated January 9, 1386, in which the hangman of
Falaise acknowledges to have been paid by the Viscount of
Falaise ten sous and ten deniers tournois for the execution
of an infanticidal sow, and also ten sous tournois for a new
glove _p._ 335
H. Receipt, dated September 24, 1394, in which Jehan Micton
acknowledges that he received the sum of fifty sous tournois
from Thomas de Juvigney, Viscount of Mortaing, for having
hanged a pig, which had killed and murdered a child in the
parish of Roumaygne _p._ 336
I. Attestation of Symon de Baudemont, Lieutenant of the
Bailiff of Nantes and Meullant, made by order of the said
bailiff and the king’s proctor, on March 15, 1403, and
certifying to the expenses incurred in executing a sow that
had devoured a small child _p._ 338
J. Receipt, dated October 16, 1408, and signed by Toustain
Pincheon, jailer of the royal prisons in the town of Pont de
Larche, acknowledging the payment of nineteen sous and six
deniers tournois for food furnished to sundry men and to one
pig kept in the said prisons on charge of crime _p._ 340
K. Letters Patent, by which Philip the Bold, Duke of
Burgundy, on September 12, 1379, granted the petition of the
Friar Humbert de Poutiers, Prior of the town of
Saint-Marcel-lez-Jussey, and pardoned two herds of swine,
which had been condemned to suffer the extreme penalty of
the law as accomplices in an infanticide committed by three
sows _p._ 342
L. Sentence pronounced by the Mayor of Loens de Chartres on
the 12th of September, 1606, condemning Guillaume Guyart to
be hanged and burned together with a bitch _p._ 344
M. Sentence pronounced by the Judge of Savigny in January,
1457, condemning to death an infanticidal sow. Also the
sentence of confiscation pronounced nearly a month later on
the six pigs of the said sow for complicity in her crime _p._ 346
N. Sentence pronounced, April 18, 1499, in a criminal
prosecution instituted before the Bailiff of the Abbey of
Josaphat, in the Commune of Sèves, near Chartres, against a
pig condemned to be hanged for having killed an infant. In
this case the owners of the pig were fined eighteen francs
for negligence, because the child was their fosterling _p._ 352
O. Sentence pronounced, June 14, 1494, by the Grand Mayor of
the church and monastery of St. Martin de Laon, condemning a
pig to be hanged and strangled for infanticide committed on
the fee-farm of Clermont-lez-Montcornet _p._ 354
P. Sentence pronounced, March 27, 1567, by the Royal Notary
and Proctor of the Bailiwick and Bench of the Court of
Judicatory of Senlis, condemning a sow with a black snout to
be hanged for her cruelty and ferocity in murdering a girl
of four months, and forbidding the inhabitants of the said
seignioralty to let such beasts run at large on penalty of
an arbitrary fine _p._ 356
Q. Sentence of death pronounced upon a bull, May 16, 1499,
by the Bailiff of the Abbey of Beaupré, for furiously
killing Lucas Dupont, a young man of fourteen or fifteen
years of age _p._ 358
R. Scene from Racine’s comedy _Les Plaideurs_, in which a
dog is tried and condemned to the galleys for stealing a
capon _p._ 360
S. Record of the decision of the Law Faculty of the
University of Leipsic condemning a cow to death for having
killed a woman at Machern near Leipsic, July 20, 1621 _p._ 361
BIBLIOGRAPHY _p._ 362
INDEX _p._ 373
THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF ANIMALS
INTRODUCTION
The present volume is the result of the revision and expansion of two
essays entitled “Bugs and Beasts before the Law,” and “Modern and Mediæval
Punishment,” which appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, in August and
September 1884. Since that date the author has collected a vast amount of
additional material on the subject, which has also been discussed by other
writers in several publications, the most noteworthy of which are
Professor Karl von Amira’s _Thierstrafen und Thierprocesse_ (Innsbruck,
1891), Carlo d’Addosio’s _Bestie Delinquenti_ (Napoli, 1892), and G.
Tobler’s _Thierprocesse in der Schweiz_ (Bern, 1893), but in none of these
works, except the first-mentioned, are there any important statements of
facts or citations of cases in addition to those adduced in the essays
already mentioned, for which the writer was indebted chiefly to the
extensive and exceedingly valuable researches of Berriat-Saint-Prix and M.
L. Ménebréa, and the _Consilium Primum_ of Bartholomew Chassenée, cited in
the appended bibliography. Professor Von Amira is a very distinguished and
remarkably keen-sighted jurisprudent and treats the matter exclusively
from a jurisprudential point of view, his main object being to discover
some general principle on which to explain these strange phenomena, and
thus to assign to them their proper place and true significance in the
historical evolution of the idea of justice and the methods of attaining
it by legal procedure.
Von Amira draws a sharp line of technical distinction between Thierstrafen
and Thierprocesse; the former were capital punishments inflicted by
secular tribunals upon pigs, cows, horses, and other domestic animals as a
penalty for homicide; the latter were judicial proceedings instituted by
ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice, locusts, weevils, and other
vermin in order to prevent them from devouring the crops, and to expel
them from orchards, vineyards, and cultivated fields by means of exorcism
and excommunication. Animals, which were in the service of man, could be
arrested, tried, convicted and executed, like any other members of his
household; it was, therefore, not necessary to summon them to appear in
court at a specified time to answer for their conduct, and thus make
them, in the strict sense of the term, a party to the prosecution, for
the sheriff had already taken them in charge and consigned them to the
custody of the jailer. Insects and rodents, on the other hand, which were
not subject to human control and could not be seized and imprisoned by the
civil authorities, demanded the intervention of the Church and the
exercise of its supernatural functions for the purpose of compelling them
to desist from their devastations and to retire from all places devoted to
the production of human sustenance. The only feasible method of staying
the ravages of these swarms of noxious creatures was to resort to
“metaphysical aid” and to expel or exterminate them by sacerdotal
conjuring and cursing. The fact that it was customary to catch several
specimens of the culprits and bring them before the seat of justice, and
there solemnly put them to death while the anathema was being pronounced,
proves that this summary manner of dealing would have been applied to the
whole of them, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, the attempt was
sometimes made to get rid of them by setting a price on their heads, as
was the case with the plague of locusts at Rome in 880, when a reward was
offered for their extermination, but all efforts in this direction proving
futile, on account of the rapidity with which they propagated, recourse
was had to exorcisms and be-sprinklings with holy water.
D’Addosio speaks of the actions brought against domestic animals for
homicide as penal prosecutions, and those instituted against insects and
vermin for injury done to the fruits of the field as civil suits
(_processi civili_); but the latter designation is not correct in any
proper sense of the term, since these actions were not suits to recover
for damages to property, but had solely a preventive or prohibitive
character. The judicial process was preliminary to the utterance of the
malediction and essential to its efficacy. Before fulminating an
excommunication the whole machinery of justice was put in motion in order
to establish the guilt of the accused, who were then warned, admonished,
and threatened, and, in cases of obduracy, smitten with the _anathema
maranatha_ and devoted to utter destruction. As with all bans, charms,
exorcisms, incantations, and other magical hocus-pocus, the omission of
any formality would vitiate the whole procedure, and, by breaking the
spell, deprive the imprecation or interdiction of its occult virtue.
Ecclesiastical thunder would thus be robbed of its fatal bolt and reduced
to mere empty noise, the harmless explosion of a blank cartridge.
The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of these
phenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxious
vermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan
(_instigante sathana, per maleficium diabolicum_), and are denounced and
deprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (_diaboli et
ministrorum insidias_); again they are treated as creatures of God and
agents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latter
point of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would be
regarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon the
Supreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether they
were the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the only
proper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of the
Church, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform the
adjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances and
propitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects were
instruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished to
some arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the other
hand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated to
scourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, after
they had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from the
cultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live in
comfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instances
of both kinds of treatment.
It was also as a protection against evil spirits that the penalty of death
was inflicted upon domestic animals. A homicidal pig or bull was not
necessarily assumed to be the incarnation of a demon, although it was
maintained by eminent authorities, as we have shown in the present work,
that all beasts and birds, as well as creeping things, were devils in
disguise; but the homicide, if it were permitted to go unpunished, was
supposed to furnish occasion for the intervention of devils, who were
thereby enabled to take possession of both persons and places. This belief
was prevalent in the Middle Ages, and is still taught by the Catholic
Church. In a little volume entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach
Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_, of which a revised and enlarged
edition was published at Stuttgart in 1893 for the use of priests as a
manual of instruction in performing exorcisms, it is expressly stated by
the reverend author, Dr. Theobald Bischofberger, that a spot, where a
murder or other heinous crime has been committed, if the said crime
remains undetected or unexpiated, is sure to be infested by demons, and
that the inmates of a house or other building erected upon such a site
will be peculiarly liable to diabolical possession, however innocent they
may be personally. Indeed, the more pure and pious they are, the greater
will be the efforts of the demons to enter into and annoy them. Not only
human beings, but also all cattle after their kind, and even the fowls of
the barnyard are subject to infernal vexations of this sort. The
infestation thus produced may continue for centuries, and, although the
property may pass by purchase or inheritance into other hands and be held
successively by any number of rightful owners, the demons remain in
possession unaffected by legal conveyances. If each proprietor imagines he
has an exclusive title to the estate, he reckons without the host of
devils, who exercise there the right of squatter sovereignty and can be
expelled only by sacerdotal authority. Dr. Bischofberger goes so far as to
affirm that it behoves the purchaser of a piece of land to make sure that
it is unencumbered by devils as well as by debts, otherwise he may have to
suffer more from a demoniac lien than from a dead pledge or any other form
of obligation in law. Information concerning the latter can be obtained at
the registry of deeds, but it is far more difficult to ascertain whether
the infernal powers have any claims upon it, since this knowledge can be
derived only inferentially and indirectly from inquiries into the
character of the proprietors for many generations and must always rest
upon presumptive evidence rather than positive proof. Our author does not
hesitate to assert that houses which have been the abodes of pious people
from time immemorial ought to have a higher market value than the
habitations of notoriously wicked families. It is thus shown that
“godliness is profitable” not only “unto all things,” but also, as
mediæval writers were wont to say, unto some things besides, which the
apostle Paul in his admonitions to his “son Timothy” never dreamed of. We
are also told that the _aura corrumpens_ resulting from diabolical
infestation imparts to the dwelling a peculiar taint, which it often
retains for a long time after the demons have been cast out, so that
sensitive persons cannot enter such a domicile without getting nervously
excited, slightly dizzy and all in a tremble. The carnal mind, which is at
enmity with all supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, would seek
the source of such sensations in an _aura corrumpens_ arising from the
lack of proper ventilation, and find relief by simply opening the windows
instead of calling in a priest with aspergills, and censers, and
_benedictiones locorum_.
We have a striking illustration of this truth in the frequent cases of
“bewitched kine.” European peasants often confine their cattle in stalls
so small and low that the beasts have not sufficient air to breathe. The
result is that a short time after the stalls are closed for the night the
cattle get excited and begin to fret and fume and stamp, and are found in
the morning weak and exhausted and covered with sweat. The peasant
attributes these phenomena to witchcraft, and calls in an exorcist, who
proceeds to expel the evil spirits. Before performing the ceremony of
conjuration, he opens the doors and windows and the admission of fresh
air makes it quite easy to cast out the demons. A German veterinarian, who
reports several instances of this kind, tried in vain to convince the
peasants that the trouble was due, not to sorcery, but to the absence of
proper sanatory conditions, and finally, in despair of accomplishing his
purpose in any other way, told them that if the windows were left open so
that the witches could go in and out freely, the demons would not enter
into the cattle. This advice was followed and the malign influence ceased.
The ancient Greeks held that a murder, whether committed by a man, a
beast, or an inanimate object, unless properly expiated, would arouse the
furies and bring pestilence upon the land; the mediæval Church taught the
same doctrine, and only substituted the demons of Christian theology for
the furies of classical mythology. As early as 864, the Council of Worms
decreed that bees, which had caused the death of a human being by stinging
him, should be forthwith suffocated in the hive before they could make any
more honey, otherwise the entire contents of the hive would become
demoniacally tainted and thus rendered unfit for use as food; it was
declared to be unclean, and this declaration of impurity implied a
liability to diabolical possession on the part of those who, like Achan,
“transgressed in the thing accursed.” It was the same horror of aiding
and abetting demons and enabling them to extend their power over mankind
that caused a cock, which was suspected of having laid the so-called
“basilisk-egg,” or a hen, addicted to the ominous habit of crowing, to be
summarily put to death, since it was only by such expiation that the evil
could be averted.
A Swiss jurist, Eduard Osenbrüggen (_Studien zur deutschen und
schweizerischen Rechtsgeschichte._ Schaffhausen, 1868, p. 139-149),
endeavours to explain these judicial proceedings on the theory of the
personification of animals. As only a human being can commit crime and
thus render himself liable to punishment, he concludes that it is only by
an act of personification that the brute can be placed in the same
category as man and become subject to the same penalties. In support of
this view he refers to the fact that in ancient and mediæval times
domestic animals were regarded as members of the household and entitled to
the same legal protection as human vassals. In the Frankish capitularies
all beasts of burden or so-called juments were included in the king’s ban
and enjoyed the peace guaranteed by royal authority: _Ut jumenta pacem
habent similiter per bannum regis_. The weregild extended to them as it
did to women and serfs under cover of the man as master of the house and
lord of the manor. The beste covert, to use the old legal phraseology, was
thus invested with human rights and inferentially endowed with human
responsibilities. According to old Welsh law atonement was made for
killing a cat or dog belonging to another person by suspending the animal
by the tail so that its nozzle touched the ground, and then pouring wheat
over it until its body was entirely covered. Old Germanic law also
recognized the competency of these animals as witnesses in certain cases,
as, for example, when burglary had been committed by night, in the absence
of human testimony, the householder was permitted to appear before the
court and make complaint, carrying on his arm a dog, cat or cock, and
holding in his hand three straws taken from the roof as symbols of the
house. Symbolism and personification, as applied to animals and inanimate
objects, unquestionably played an important part in primitive legislation,
but this principle does not account for the excommunication and
anathematization of noxious vermin or for the criminal prosecution and
capital punishment of homicidal beasts, nor does it throw the faintest
light upon the origin and purpose of such proceedings. Osenbrüggen’s
statement that the cock condemned to be burned at Bâle was personified as
a heretic (Ketzer) and therefore sentenced to the stake, is a far-fetched
and wholly fanciful explanation. As we have already seen, the unfortunate
fowl, suspected of laying an egg in violation of its nature, was feared as
an abnormal, inauspicious, and therefore diabolic creature; the fatal
cockatrice, which was supposed to issue from this egg when hatched, and
the use which might be made of its contents for promoting intercourse with
evil spirits, caused such a cock to be dreaded as a dangerous purveyor to
His Satanic Majesty, but no member of the Kohlenberg Court ever thought of
consigning Chanticleer to the flames as the peer of Wycliffe or of Huss in
heresy.
The judicial prosecution of animals, resulting in their excommunication by
the Church or their execution by the hangman, had its origin in the common
superstition of the age, which has left such a tragical record of itself
in the incredibly absurd and atrocious annals of witchcraft. The same
ancient code that condemned a homicidal ox to be stoned, declared that a
witch should not be suffered to live, and although the Jewish lawgiver may
have regarded the former enactment chiefly as a police regulation designed
to protect persons against unruly cattle, it was, like the decree of death
against witches, genetically connected with the Hebrew cult and had
therefore an essentially religious character. It was these two paragraphs
of the Mosaic law that Christian tribunals in the Middle Ages were wont to
adduce as their authority for prosecuting and punishing both classes of
delinquents, although in the application of them they were undoubtedly
incited by motives and influenced by fears wholly foreign to the mind of
the Levitical legislator. The extension of Christianity beyond the
boundaries of Judaism and the conversion of Gentile nations led to its
gradual but radical transformation. The propagation of the new and
aggressive faith among the Greeks and Romans, and especially among the
Indo-Germanic tribes of Northern Europe, necessarily deposed, degraded and
demonized the ancestral deities of the proselytes, who were taught
henceforth to abjure the gods of their fathers and to denounce them as
devils. Thus missionary zeal and success, while saving human souls from
endless perdition, served also to enlarge the realm of the Prince of
Darkness and to increase the number of his subjects and satellites. The
new convert saw them with his mind’s eye skulking about in obscure places,
haunting forest dells and mountain streams by day, approaching human
habitations by night and waiting for opportunities to lure him back to the
old worship or to take vengeance upon him for his recreancy. Every
untoward event furnished an occasion for their intervention, which could
be averted or repelled only by the benedictions, exorcisms or anathemas of
the Church. The ecclesiastical authorities were therefore directly
interested in encouraging this superstitious belief as one of the chief
sources of their power, and it was for this reason that diabolical
agencies were assumed to be at work in every maleficent force of nature
and to be incarnate in every noxious creature. That this doctrine is
still held and this policy still pursued by the bishops and other clergy
of the Roman Catholic Church, no one familiar with the literature of the
subject can deny.
Besides the manuals and rituals already cited, consult, for example, _Die
deutschen Bischöfe und der Aberglaube_: Eine Denkschrift von Dr. Fr.
Heinrich Reusch, Professor of Theology in the University of Bonn, who
vigorously protests against the countenance given by the bishops to the
crassest superstitions. For specimens of the literature condemned by the
German professor, but approved by the prelates and the pope, see such
periodicals as _Monat-Rosen zu Ehren der Unbefleckten Gottes-Mutter Maria
and Der Sendbote des göttlichen Herzens Jesu_, published by Jesuits at
Innsbruck in the Tyrol.
It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories of
juridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological and
psychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliterate
the line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacity
for committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds are
concerned. According to Lombroso there are _i delinquenti nati fra gli
animali_, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injure
others of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the laws
of the society in which they live. Thus the modern criminologist
recognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized by
Jocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as _bestia
laedens ex interna malitia_; but although he might admit that the beast
perpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clear
consciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such a
creature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributive
justice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory of
punishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influence
which it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second part
of the present work the writer calls attention to this important
revolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely as
possible its essential features and indicating its general scope and
practical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must be
remembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, that
eagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of the
anatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which the
commission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controlling
factor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system of
jurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of human
responsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from having
worked out a satisfactory solution of the intricate problem of the origin
and nature of crime and its proper penalty.
In 1386, an infanticidal sow was executed in the old Norman city of
Falaise, and the scene was represented in fresco on the west wall of the
Church of the Holy Trinity in that city. This curious painting no longer
exists, and, so far as can be ascertained, has never been engraved. It has
been frequently and quite fully described by different writers, and the
frontispiece of the present volume is not a reproduction of the original
picture, but a reconstruction of it according to these descriptions. It is
taken from Arthur Mangin’s _L’Homme et la Bête_ (Paris, 1872), of which
all the illustrations are more or less fancy sketches. A full account of
the trial and execution is given in the present volume.
The iconographic edition of Jocodus Damhouder’s _Praxis Rerum Criminalium_
(Antverpiæ, 1562) contains at the beginning of each section an engraving
representing the perpetration of the crimes about to be discussed. That at
the head of the chapter entitled “De Damno Pecuario” is a lively picture
of the injuries done by animals and rendering them liable to criminal
process; it is reproduced facing page 161 of the present work.
The most important documents, from which our knowledge of these judicial
proceedings is derived, are given in the Appendix, together with a
complete list of prosecutions and excommunications during the past ten
centuries, so far as we have been able to discover any record of them.
The bibliography, although making no claim to be exhaustive, comprises the
principal works on the subject. Articles and essays, which are merely a
rehash of other publications, it has not been deemed necessary to mention.
Such, for example, are “Criminalprocesse gegen Thiere,” in _Miscellen aus
der neuesten ausländischen Literatur_ (Jena, 1830, LXV. pp. 152-55),
Jörgensen’s _Nogle Frugter af mit Otium_ (Kopenhagen, 1834, pp. 216-23);
Cretella’s “Gli Animali sotto Processo,” in _Fanfulla della Domenica_
(Florence, 1891, No. 65), all three based upon the archival researches of
Berriat-Saint-Prix and Ménabréa, and Soldan’s “La Personification des
Animaux in Helvetia,” in _Monatsschrift der Studentenverbindung Helvetia_
(VII. pp. 4-17), which is a mere restatement of Osenbrüggen’s theory.
In conclusion the author desires to express his sincere thanks to Dr.
Laubmann, Director of the Munich Hof- und Staatsbibliothek, as well as to
the other custodians of that library, for their uniform kindness and
courtesy in placing at his disposal the printed and manuscript treasures
committed to their keeping.