CHAPTER I

BUGS AND BEASTS BEFORE THE LAW

It is said that Bartholomew Chassenée,[1] a distinguished French jurist of

the sixteenth century (born at Issy-l’Evêque in 1480), made his reputation

at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before

the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously

eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province. On

complaint formally presented by the magistracy, the official or bishop’s

vicar, who exercised jurisdiction in such cases, cited the culprits to

appear on a certain day and appointed Chassenée to defend them.

In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients, Chassenée

was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas

and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in

the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least

to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge. He urged, in the first

place, that inasmuch as the defendants were dispersed over a large tract

of country and dwelt in numerous villages, a single summons was

insufficient to notify them all; he succeeded, therefore, in obtaining a

second citation, to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes

inhabited by the said rats. At the expiration of the considerable time

which elapsed before this order could be carried into effect and the

proclamation be duly made, he excused the default or non-appearance of his

clients on the ground of the length and difficulty of the journey and the

serious perils which attended it, owing to the unwearied vigilance of

their mortal enemies, the cats, who watched all their movements, and, with

fell intent, lay in wait for them at every corner and passage. On this

point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that

if a person be cited to appear at a place, to which he cannot come with

safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ,

even though such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point

was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud

between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.

At a later period of his life Chassenée was reminded of the legal

principle thus laid down and urged to apply it in favour of clients more

worthy of its protection than a horde of vagrant rodents. In 1540 he was

president of the judicial assembly known as the Parliament of Provence on

a memorable occasion when the iniquitous measure for the extirpation of

heresy by exterminating the Waldenses in the villages of Cabrières and

Merindol was under discussion. One of the members of the tribunal, a

gentleman from Arles, Renaud d’Alleins, ventured to suggest to the

presiding officer that it would be extremely unjust to condemn these

unfortunate heretics without granting them a hearing and permitting an

advocate to speak in their defence, so that they might be surrounded by

all the safeguards of justice, adding that the eminent jurist had formerly

insisted upon this right before the court of Autun and maintained that

even animals should not be adjudged and sentenced without having a proper

person appointed to plead their cause. Chassenée thereupon obtained a

decree from the king commanding that the accused Waldenses should be

heard; but his death, which occurred very soon afterwards, changed the

state of affairs and prevented whatever good effects might have been

produced by this simple act of justice. [Cf. Desnoyers: _Recherches_, etc.

(_vide_ Bibliography), p. 18.]

In the report of the trial published in the _Thémis Jurisconsulte_ for

1820 (Tome I. pp. 194 sqq.) by Berriat Saint-Prix, on the authority of the

celebrated Jacques Auguste De Thou, President of the Parliament of Paris,

the sentence pronounced by the official is not recorded. But whatever the

judicial decision may have been, the ingenuity and acumen with which

Chassenée conducted the defence, the legal learning which he brought to

bear upon the case, and the eloquence of his plea enlisted the public

interest and established his fame as a criminal lawyer and forensic

orator.

Chassenée is said to have been employed in several cases of this kind, but

no records of them seem to have been preserved, although it is possible

that they may lie buried in the dusty archives of some obscure provincial

town in France, once the seat of an ecclesiastical tribunal. The whole

subject, however, has been treated by him exhaustively in a book entitled

_Consilium primum, quod tractatus jure dici potest, propter multiplicem et

reconditam doctrinam, ubi luculenter et accurate tractatur quaestio illa:

De excommunicatione animalium insectorum_. This treatise, which is the

first of sixty-nine consilia, embodying opinions on various legal

questions touching the holding and transmission of property, entail,

loans, contracts, dowries, wills, and kindred topics, and which holds a

peculiar place in the history of jurisprudence, was originally published

in 1531, and reprinted in 1581, and again in 1588. The edition referred to

in the present work is the first reprint of 1581, a copy of which is in

the Royal Court and State Library of Munich.

This curious dissertation originated, as it appears, in an application of

the inhabitants of Beaune to the ecclesiastical tribunal of Autun for a

decree of excommunication against certain noxious insects called huberes

or hurebers, probably a kind of locust or harvest-fly. The request was

granted, and the pernicious creatures were duly accursed. Chassenée now

raises the query whether such a thing may be rightfully and lawfully done

(_sed an recte et de jure fieri possit_), and how it should be effected.

“The principal question,” he says, “is whether one can by injunction cause

such insects to withdraw from a place in which they are doing damage, or

to abstain from doing damage there, under penalty of anathema and

perpetual malediction. And although in times past there has never been any

doubt on this point, yet I have thought that the subject should be

thoroughly examined anew, lest I should seem to fall into the vice

censured by Cicero (_De Off._ I. 6), of regarding things which we do not

know as if they were well understood by us, and therefore rashly giving

them our assent.” He divides his treatise into five parts, or rather

discusses the subject under five heads: “First, lest I may seem to

discourse to the populace, how are these our animals called in the Latin

language; secondly, whether these our animals can be summoned; thirdly,

whether they can be summoned by procurators, and, if they are cited to

appear personally, whether they can appear by proxy, _i.e._ through

procurators appointed by the judge who summons them; fourthly, what

judge, whether layman or ecclesiastic, is competent to try them, and how

he is to proceed against them and to pass and execute sentence upon them;

fifthly, what constitutes an anathema and how does it differ from an

excommunication.” Chassenée’s method of investigation is not that of the

philosophic thinker, who marshals facts under general laws and traces them

to rational causes, but combines that of the lawyer, who quotes precedents

and examines witnesses, with that of the theologian, who balances

authorities and serves us with texts instead of arguments. He scrupulously

avoids all psychological speculation or metaphysical reasoning, and simply

aims to show that animals have been tried, convicted, and sentenced by

civil and ecclesiastical courts, and that the competence of these

tribunals has been generally recognized.

The documentary evidence adduced is drawn from a great variety of sources:

the scriptures of the Old and New Testament, pagan poets and philosophers,

patristic theologians and homilists, mediæval hagiologists, Virgil, Ovid,

Pliny, Cicero, Cato, Aristotle, Seneca, Silius Italicus, Boethius, Gregory

the Great, Pico della Mirandola, the laws of Moses, the prophecies of

Daniel, and the Institutes of Justinian are alike laid under contribution

and quoted as of equal authority. All is fish that comes to his net out

of his erudition, be it salmon or sea-urchin. If twelve witnesses can be

produced in favour of a statement, and only two against it, his reason

bows to the will of the majority, and accepts the proposition as proved.

It must be added, however, to his credit, that he proceeds in this matter

with strict impartiality and perfect rectitude, takes whatever evidence is

at hand, and never tries to pack the witness-box.

His knowledge of obscure and now utterly forgotten authors, secular and

ecclesiastic, is immense. Like so many scholars of his day he was

prodigiously learned, without being remarkable for clearness or

originality of thought. Indeed, the vastness of his erudition seems rather

to have hampered than helped the vigorous growth of his intellectual

faculties. He often indulges in logical subtilties so shallow in their

speciousness, that they ought not to deceive the veriest smatterer in

dialectics; and the reader is constantly tempted to answer his laboured

argumentations, as Tristram Shandy’s Uncle Toby did the lucubrations of

Corporal Trim, by “whistling half-a-dozen bars of Lillibullero.” The

examples he adduces afford striking illustrations of the gross credulity

to which the strongly conservative, precedent-mongering mind of the

jurisconsult is apt to fall an easy prey. The habit of seeking knowledge

and guidance exclusively in the records and traditions of the past, in the

so-called “wisdom of ages,” renders him peculiarly liable to regard every

act and utterance of antiquity as necessarily wise and authoritative.

In proof of the power of anathemas, Chassenée refers to the cursing of the

serpent in the Garden of Eden, causing it to go upon its belly for all

time; David’s malediction of the mountains of Gilboa, so that they had

neither rain nor dew; God’s curse upon the city of Jericho, making its

strong walls fall before the blasts of trumpets; and in the New Testament

the withered fig-tree of Bethany. The words of Jesus, “Every tree that

bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire,” he

interprets, not merely as the best means of getting rid of a cumberer of

the orchard, but as a condemnation and punishment of the tree for its

delinquencies, and adds: “If, therefore, it is permitted to destroy an

irrational thing, because it does not produce fruit, much more is it

permitted to curse it, since the greater penalty includes the less” (_cum

si liceat quid est plus, debet licere quid est minus_).

An English professor of divinity, Richard Chevenix Trench, justifies the

withering of the fruitless fig-tree on the same ground or, at least, by a

similar process of reasoning: “It was punished, not for being without

fruit, but for proclaiming by the voice of those leaves that it had such;

not for being barren, but for being false.” According to this exegesis, it

was the telling of a wilful lie that “drew on it the curse.” The guilty

fig is thus endowed with a moral character and made clearly conscious of

the crime for which it suffered the penalty of death: “Almost as soon as

the word of the Lord was spoken, a shuddering fear may have run through

all the leaves of the tree, which was thus stricken at the heart.” As

regards the culpability and punishableness of the object, the modern

divine and the mediæval jurist occupy the same standpoint; only the

latter, with a stricter judicial sense, insists that there shall be no

infliction of punishment until the malefactor has been convicted by due

process of law, and that he shall enjoy all the safeguards which legal

forms and technicalities have thrown around him and under whose covert

even the vilest criminal has the right to take refuge. The Anglican

hermeneutist, on the contrary, would justify the curse and admit the

validity of the anathema, although it was only the angry expression of an

unreasonable impatience disappointed in not finding fruit at the wrong

season, “for the time of figs was not yet.”

A curious and characteristic specimen of the absurd and illogical

inferences, which Chassenée is constantly deducing from his texts, is the

use he makes of the passage in Virgil’s first Georgic, in which the poet

remarks that “no religion has forbidden us to draw off water-courses for

irrigating purposes, to enclose crops with fences, or to lay snares for

birds,” all these things being essential to successful husbandry. But from

the right to snare birds, our jurisprudent infers the right to

excommunicate them, since “no snares are stronger than the meshes of an

anathema.” Far-fetched deductions and wretched twaddle of this sort fill

many pages of the famous lawyer’s dissertation.

Coming down to more recent times, Chassenée mentions several instances of

the effectiveness of anathemas, accepting as convincing testimony the

ecstacies of saints and the extravagant statements of hagiologists without

the slightest expression of doubt as to the truth of these legends. Thus

he relates how a priest anathematized an orchard, because its fruits

tempted the children of his parish and kept them away from mass. The

orchard remained barren until, at the solicitation of the Duchess of

Burgundy, the ban was removed. In like manner the Bishop of Lausanne freed

Lake Leman from eels, which had become so numerous as seriously to

interfere with boating and bathing; on another occasion in the year 1451

the same ecclesiastic expelled from the waters of this lake an immense

number of enormous blood-suckers, which threatened to destroy all the

large fish and were especially fatal to salmon, the favourite article of

food on fast-days. This method of procedure was both cheap and effective

and, as Felix Malleolus informs us in his _Tractatus de Exorcismis_ (I),

received the approbation of all the learned doctors of the University of

Heidelberg: _omnes studii Heydelbergensis Doctores hujusmodi ritus

videntes et legentes consenserunt_. By the same agency an abbot changed

the sweet white bread of a Count of Toulouse, who abetted and protected

heresy, into black, mouldy bread, so that he, who would fain feed souls

with corrupt spiritual food, was forced to satisfy his bodily hunger with

coarse and unsavoury provender. No sooner was the excommunication removed

than the bread resumed its original purity and colour. Egbert, Bishop of

Trier, anathematized the swallows, which disturbed the devotions of the

faithful by their chirping and chattering, and sacrilegiously defiled his

head and vestments with their droppings, when he was officiating at the

altar. He forbade them to enter the sacred edifice on pain of death; and

it is still a popular superstition at Trier, that if a swallow flies into

the cathedral, it immediately falls to the ground and gives up the ghost.

Another holy man, known as John the Lamb, cursed the fishes, which had

incurred his anger, with results equally fatal to the finny tribe. It is

also related of the honey-tongued St. Bernard, that he excommunicated a

countless swarm of flies, which annoyed the worshippers and officiating

priests in the abbey church of Foigny, and lo, on the morrow they were,

like Sennacherib’s host, “all dead corpses.” William, Abbot of St.

Theodore in Rheims, who records this miraculous event, states that as soon

as the execration was uttered, the flies fell to the floor in such

quantities that they had to be thrown out with shovels (_palis

ejicientes_). This incident, he adds, was so well known that the cursing

of the flies of Foigny became proverbial and formed the subject of a

parable. [_Vita S. Bernardi_, auctore Wilhelmo abbate S. Thod. Rhem. I.

11.] According to the usual account, the malediction was not so drastic in

its operation and did not cause the flies to disappear until the next day.

The rationalist, whose chill and blighting breath is ever nipping the

tender buds of faith, would doubtless suggest that a sharp and sudden

frost may have added to the force and efficacy of the excommunication. The

saint resorted to this severe and summary measure, says the monkish

chronicler, because the case was urgent and “no other remedy was at hand.”

Perhaps this lack of other means of relief may refer to the absence of

“deacons with fly-flaps,” who, according to a contemporary writer, were

appointed “to drive away the flies when the Pope celebrateth.”

The island Reichenau in Lake Constance, which derives its name from its

fertility and is especially famous for the products of its vineyards and

its orchards, was once so infested by venomous reptiles as to be

uninhabitable by human beings. Early in the eighth century, as the legend

goes, it was visited by St. Pirminius, and no sooner had he set foot upon

it than these creatures all crawled and wriggled into the water, so that

the surface of the lake was covered for three days and three nights with

serpents, scorpions and hideous worms. Peculiar vermifugal efficacy was

ascribed to the crosier of St. Magnus, the apostle of Algau, which was

preserved in the cloister of St. Mang at Füssen in Bavaria, and from 1685

to 1770 was repeatedly borne in solemn procession to Lucerne, Zug, Schwyz

and other portions of Switzerland for the expulsion and extermination of

rats, mice, cockchafers and other insects. Sometimes formulas of

malediction were procured directly from the pope, which, like saints’

curses, could be applied without legal formalities. Thus in 1660 the

inhabitants of Lucerne paid four pistoles and one Roman thaler for a

document of this kind; on Nov. 15, 1731, the municipal council of Thonou

in Savoy resolved to join with other parishes of that province to obtain

from Rome an excommunication against insects, the expenses for which are

to be assessed _pro rata_;[2] in 1740 the commune of Piuro purchased from

His Holiness a similar anathema; in the same year the common council of

Chiavenna discussed the propriety of applying to Rome for an execratory

against beetles and bears; and in December 1752 it was proposed by the

same body to take like summary measures in order to get rid of a pest of

rodents. In 1729, 1730 and 1749 the municipal council of Lucerne ordered

processions to be made on St. Magnus’ Day from the Church of St. Francis

to Peter’s Chapel for the purpose of expelling weevils. This custom was

observed annually from 1749 to 1798. The pompous ceremony has been

superseded in Protestant countries by an officially appointed day of

fasting and prayer.

In his “First Counsel” Chassenée not only treats of methods of procedure,

and gives forms of plaints to be drawn up and tendered to the tribunal by

the injured party, as well as useful hints to the pettifogger in the

exercise of his tortuous and tricky profession, but he also discusses many

legal principles touching the jurisdiction of courts, the functions of

judges, and other characteristic questions of civil, criminal, and

canonical law. Animals, he says, should be tried by ecclesiastical

tribunals, except in cases where the penalty involves the shedding of

blood. An ecclesiastical judge is not competent _in causa sanguinis_, and

can impose only canonical punishments, although he may have jurisdiction

in temporal matters and punish crimes not involving a capital sentence.

[_Nam judex ecclesiasticus in causa sanguinis non est competens judex,

licet habeat jurisdictionem in temporalibus et possit crimina poenam

sanguinis non existentia_ (_exigentia_ is obviously the correct reading)

_castigare_. Cons. prim. IV. § 5.] For this reason the Church never

condemned heretics to death, but, having decided that they should die,

gave them over to the secular power for formal condemnation, usually under

the hollow and hypocritical pretence of recommending them to mercy. In the

prosecution of animals the summons was commonly published from the parish

pulpit and the whole judicial process bore a distinctively ecclesiastical

character. In most cases the presiding judge or official was the vicar of

the parish acting as the deputy of the bishop of the diocese. Occasionally

the curate officiated in this capacity. Sometimes the trial was conducted

before a civil magistrate under the authority of the Church, or the matter

was submitted to the adjudication of a conjurer, who, however, appointed

two proctors to plead respectively for the plaintiff and the defendant and

who rendered his verdict in due legal form. Indeed, the word “conjurer”

seems to have been used as a popular designation of the person, whether

priest or layman, who exercised judicatory functions in such trials,

probably because, as a rule, the sentence could be executed only by

conjuration or the invocation of supernatural aid.

Another point, which strikes us very comically, but which had to be

decided before the trial could proceed, was whether the accused were to be

regarded as clergy or laity. Chassenée thinks that there is no necessity

of testing each individual case, but that animals should be looked upon as

lay persons. This, he declares, should be the general presumption; but if

any one wishes to affirm that they have _ordinem clericatus_ and are

entitled to benefit of clergy, the burden of proof rests upon him and he

is bound to show it (_deberet estud probare_). Probably our jurist would

have made an exception in favour of the beetle, which entomologists call

_clerus_; it is certain, at any rate, that if a bug bearing this name had

been brought to trial, the learning and acuteness displayed in arguing the

point in dispute would have been astounding. We laugh at the subtilties

and quiddities of mediæval theologians, who seriously discussed such silly

questions as the digestibility of the consecrated elements in the

eucharist; but the importance attached to these trivialities was not so

much the peculiarity of a single profession as the mental habit of the

age, the result of scholastic training and scholastic methods of

investigation, which tainted law no less than divinity. Nevertheless the

ancillary relations of all other sciences and disciplines to theology

render the latter chiefly responsible for this fatal tendency.

Chassenée also makes a distinction between punitive and preventive

purposes in the prosecution of animals, between inflicting penalties upon

them for crimes committed and taking precautionary measures to keep them

from doing damage. By this means he seeks to evade the objection, that

animals are incapable of committing crimes, because they are not endowed

with rational faculties. He then proceeds to show that “things not

allowable in respect to crimes already committed are allowable in respect

to crimes about to be committed in order to prevent them.” Thus a layman

may not arrest an ecclesiastic for a delict fully consummated, but may

seize and detain him in order to hinder the consummation of a delict. In

such cases, an inferior may coerce and correct a superior; even an

irrational creature may put restraint upon a human being and hold him back

from wrong-doing. In illustration of this legal point he cites an example

from Holy Writ, where “Balaam, the prophet and servant of the Most High,

was rebuked by a she-ass.”

Chassenée endeavours to clinch his argument as usual by quoting biblical

texts and adducing incidents from legendary literature. The province of

zoö-psychology, which would have furnished him with better material for

the elucidation of his subject, he leaves untouched, simply because it was

unknown to him. If crime consists in the commission of deeds hurtful to

other sentient beings, knowing such actions to be wrong, then the lower

animals are certainly guilty of criminal offences. It is a

well-established fact, that birds, beasts and insects, living together in

communities, have certain laws, which are designed to promote the general

welfare of the herd, the flock or the swarm, and the violation of which by

individual members they punish corporally or capitally as the case may

require. It is likewise undeniable, that domestic animals often commit

crimes against man and betray a consciousness of the nature of their acts

by showing fear of detection or by trying to conceal what they have done.

Man, too, recognizes their moral responsibility by inflicting chastisement

upon them, and sometimes feels justified in putting incorrigible

offenders, a vicious bull, a thievish cat or a sheep-killing dog,

summarily to death. Of course this kind of punishment is chiefly

preventive, nevertheless it is provoked by acts already perpetrated and is

not wholly free from the element of retributive justice. Such a

proceeding, however, is arbitrary and autocratic, and if systematically

applied to human beings would be denounced as intolerable tyranny.

Chassenée insists that under no circumstances is a penalty to be imposed

except by judicial decision--_nam poena nunquam imponitur, nisi lex

expresse dicat_--and in support of this principle refers to the apostle

Paul, who declares that “sin is not imputed when there is no law.” He

appears to think that any technical error would vitiate the whole

procedure and reduce the ban of the Church to mere _brutum fulmen_. If he

lays so great stress upon the observance of legal forms, which in the

criminal prosecution of brute beasts strike us as the caricature and farce

of justice, it is because he deems them essential to the effectiveness of

an excommunication. The slightest mispronunciation of a word, an incorrect

accentuation or false intonation in uttering a spell suffices to dissolve

the charm and nullify the occult workings of the magic. The lack of a

single link breaks the connection and destroys the binding force of the

chain; everything must be “well-thought, well-said and well-done,” not

ethically, but ritually, as prescribed in the old Avestan formula: _humata

hûkhta huvarshta_. All the mutterings and posturings, which accompany the

performance of a Brahmanical sacrifice, or a Catholic mass, or any other

kind of incantation have their significance, and none of them can be

omitted without marring the perfection of the ceremonial and impairing its

power. An anathema of animals pronounced in accordance with the sentence

passed upon them by a tribunal, belongs to the same category of

conjurations and is rendered nugatory by any formal defect or judicial

irregularity.

Sometimes the obnoxious vermin were generously forewarned. Thus the

grand-vicars of Jean Rohin, Cardinal Bishop of Autun, having been informed

that slugs were devastating several estates in different parts of his

diocese, on the 17th of August, 1487, ordered public processions to be

made for three days in every parish, and enjoined upon the said slugs to

quit the territory within this period under penalty of being accursed. On

the 8th of September, 1488, a similar order was issued at Beaujeu. The

curates were charged to make processions during the offices, and the slugs

were warned three times to cease from vexing the people by corroding and

consuming the herbs of the fields and the vines, and to depart; “and if

they do not heed this our command, we excommunicate them and smite them

with our anathema.” In 1516, the official of Troyes pronounced sentence on

certain insects (_adversus brucos seu eurucas vel alia non dissimilia

animalia, Gallicè urebecs_, probably a species of _curculio_), which laid

waste the vines, and threatened them with anathema, unless they should

disappear within six days. Here it is expressly stated that a counsellor

was assigned to the accused, and a prosecutor heard in behalf of the

aggrieved inhabitants. As a means of rendering the anathema more

effective, the people are also urged to be prompt and honest in the

payment of tithes. Chassenée, too, endorses this view, and in proof of its

correctness refers to Malachi, where God promises to rebuke the devourer

for man’s sake, provided all the tithes are brought into the storehouse.

The archives of the old episcopal city of St. Jean-de-Maurienne contain

the original records of legal proceedings instituted against some

insects, which had ravaged the vineyards of St. Julien, a hamlet situated

on the route over Mt. Cenis and famous for the excellence of its vintage.

The defendants in this case were a species of greenish weevil (charançon)

known to entomologists as _rychites auratus_, and called by different

names, amblevin, bèche, verpillion, in different provinces of France.

Complaint was first made by the wine-growers of St. Julien in 1545 before

François Bonnivard, doctor of laws. The procurator Pierre Falcon and the

advocate Claude Morel defended the insects, and Pierre Ducol appeared for

the plaintiffs. After the presentation and discussion of the case by both

parties, the official, instead of passing sentence, issued a proclamation,

dated the 8th of May, 1546, recommending public prayers and beginning with

the following characteristic preamble: “Inasmuch as God, the supreme

author of all that exists, hath ordained that the earth should bring forth

fruits and herbs (_animas vegetativas_), not solely for the sustenance of

rational human beings, but likewise for the preservation and support of

insects, which fly about on the surface of the soil, therefore it would be

unbecoming to proceed with rashness and precipitance against the animals

now actually accused and indicted; on the contrary, it would be more

fitting for us to have recourse to the mercy of heaven and to implore

pardon for our sins.” Then follow instructions as to the manner in which

the public prayers are to be conducted in order to propitiate the divine

wrath. The people are admonished to turn to the Lord with pure and

undivided hearts (_ex toto et puro corde_), to repent of their sins with

unfeigned contrition, and to resolve to live henceforth justly and

charitably, and above all to pay tithes. High mass is to be celebrated on

three consecutive days, namely on May 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the host

to be borne in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the

vineyards. The first mass is to be said in honour of the Holy Spirit, the

second in honour of the Blessed Virgin, and the third in honour of the

tutelar saint of the parish. At least two persons of each household are

required to take part in these religious exercises. A _procès-verbal_,

signed by the curate Romanet, attests that this programme was fully

carried out and that the insects soon afterwards disappeared.

About thirty years later, however, the scourge was renewed and the

destructive insects were actually brought to trial. The proceedings are

recorded on twenty-nine folia and entitled: _De actis scindicorum

communitatis Sancti Julliani agentium contra animalia bruta ad formam

muscarum volantia coloris viridis communi voce appellata verpillions seu

amblevins_. The documents, which are still preserved in the archives of

St. Julien, were communicated by M. Victor Dalbane, secretary of the

commune, to M. Léon Ménebréa, who printed them in the appendix to his

volume: _De l’origine de la forme et de l’esprit des jugements rendus au

moyen-âge contre les animaux_. Chambery, 1846. This treatise appeared

originally in the twelfth tome of the _Mémoires de la Société Royale

Académique de Savoie_.

It may be proper to add that Ménebréa’s theory of “the spirit, in which

these judgments against animals were given,” is wholly untenable. He

maintains that “these procedures formed originally only a kind of symbol

intended to revive the sentiment of justice among the masses of the

people, who knew of no right except might and of no law except that of

intimidation and violence. In the Middle Ages, when disorder reigned

supreme, when the weak remained without support and without redress

against the strong, and property was exposed to all sorts of attacks and

all forms of ravage and rapine, there was something indescribably

beautiful in the thought of assimilating the insect of the field to the

masterpiece of creation and putting them on an equality before the law. If

man should be taught to respect the home of the worm, how much more ought

he to regard that of his fellow-man and learn to rule in equity.”

This explanation is very fine in sentiment, but expresses a modern, and

not a mediæval way of thinking. The penal prosecution of animals, which

prevailed during the Middle Ages, was by no means peculiar to that period,

but has been frequently practised by primitive peoples and savage tribes;

neither was it designed to inculcate any such moral lesson as is here

suggested, nor did it produce any such desirable result. So far from

originating in a delicate and sensitive sense of justice, it was, as will

be more fully shown hereafter, the outcome of an extremely crude, obtuse,

and barbaric sense of justice. It was the product of a social state, in

which dense ignorance was governed by brute force, and is not to be

considered as a reaction and protest against club-law, which it really

tended to foster by making a travesty of the administration of justice and

thus turning it into ridicule. It was also in the interest of

ecclesiastical dignities to keep up this parody and perversion of a sacred

and fundamental institute of civil society, since it strengthened their

influence and extended their authority by subjecting even the caterpillar

and the canker-worm to their dominion and control.

But to return to the records of the trial. On the 13th of April, 1587, the

case was laid before “his most reverend lordship, the prince-bishop of

Maurienne, or the reverend lord his vicar-general and official” by the

syndics and procurators, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, who, in

the name of the inhabitants of St. Julien, presented the following

statement and petition: “Formerly by virtue of divine services and

earnest supplications the scourge and inordinate fury of the aforesaid

animals did cease; now they have resumed their depredations and are doing

incalculable injury. If the sins of men are the cause of this evil, it

behoveth the representatives of Christ on earth to prescribe such measures

as may be appropriate to appease the divine wrath. Wherefore we the

afore-mentioned syndics, François Amenet and Petremand Bertrand, do appear

anew (_ex integro_) and beseech the official, first, to appoint another

procurator and advocate for the insects in place of the deceased Pierre

Falcon and Claude Morel, and secondly, to visit the grounds and observe

the damage, and then to proceed with the excommunication.”

In compliance with this request, the distinguished Antoine Filliol was

appointed procurator for the insects, with a moderate fee (_salario

moderato_), and Pierre Rembaud their advocate. The parties appeared before

the official on the 30th day of May and the case was adjourned to the 6th

of June, when the advocate, Pierre Rembaud, presented his answer to the

declaration of the plaintiffs, showing that their action is not

maintainable and that they should be nonsuited. After approving of the

course pursued by his predecessor in office, he affirms that his clients

have kept within their right and not rendered themselves liable to

excommunication, since, as we read in the sacred book of Genesis, the

lower animals were created before man, and God said to them: Let the earth

bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing,

and beast of the earth after his kind; and he blessed them saying, Be

fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let fowl

multiply in the earth. Now the Creator would not have given this command,

had he not intended that these creatures should have suitable and

sufficient means of support; indeed, he has expressly stated that to every

thing that creepeth upon the earth every green herb has been given for

meat. It is therefore evident that the accused, in taking up their abode

in the vines of the plaintiffs, are only exercising a legitimate right

conferred upon them at the time of their creation. Furthermore, it is

absurd and unreasonable to invoke the power of civil and canonical law

against brute beasts, which are subject only to natural law and the

impulses of instinct. The argument urged by the counsel for the

plaintiffs, that the lower animals are made subject to man, he dismisses

as neither true in fact nor pertinent to the present case. He suggests

that the complainants, instead of instituting judicial proceedings, would

do better to entreat the mercy of heaven and to imitate the Ninevites,

who, when they heard the warning voice of the prophet Jonah, proclaimed a

fast and put on sackcloth. In conclusion, he demands that the petition of

the plaintiffs be dismissed, the monitorium revoked and annulled, and all

further proceedings stayed, to which end the gracious office of the judge

is humbly implored (_humiliter implorato benigno officio judicis_).

The case was adjourned to the 12th and finally to the 19th of June, when

Petremand Bertrand, the prosecuting attorney, presented a lengthy

replication, of which the defendants’ advocate demanded a copy with due

time for deliberation. This request led to a further adjournment till the

26th of June, but as this day turned out to be a _dies feriatus_ or

holiday, no business could be transacted until the 27th, when the advocate

of the commune, François Fay (who seems to have taken the place of Amenet,

if he be not the same person), in reply to the defendants’ plea, argued

that, although the animals were created before man, they were intended to

be subordinate to him and subservient to his use, and that this was,

indeed, the reason of their prior creation. They have no _raison d’être_

except as they minister to man, who was made to have dominion over them,

inasmuch as all things have been put under his feet, as the Psalmist

asserts and the apostle Paul reiterates. On this point, he concludes, our

opponent has added nothing refutatory of the views, which have been held

from time immemorial by our ancestors; we need only refer to the opinions

formerly expressed by the honourable Hippolyte Ducol as satisfactory. The

advocate for the defence merely remarked that he had not yet received the

document ordered on the 19th of June, and the further consideration of the

case was postponed till the 4th of July. Antoine Filliol then made a

rejoinder to the plaintiffs’ replication, denying that the subordination

of the lower animals to man involves the right of excommunicating them,

and insisting upon his former position, which the opposing counsel had not

even attempted to disprove, namely, that the lower animals are subject

solely to natural law, “a law originating in the eternal reason and

resting upon a basis as immutable as that of the divine law of revelation,

since they are derived from the same source, namely, the will and power of

God.” It is evident, he adds, that the action brought by the plaintiffs is

not maintainable and that judgment should be given accordingly.

On the 18th of July, the same parties appear before the official of St.

Jean-de-Maurienne. The procurator of the insects demands that the case be

closed and the plaintiffs debarred from drawing up any additional

statements or creating any further delay by the introduction of irrelevant

matter, and requests that a decision be rendered on the documents and

declarations already adduced. The prosecuting attorney, whose policy seems

to have been to keep the suit pending as long as possible, applies for a

new term (_alium terminum_), which was granted.

Meanwhile, in view of the law’s long delay, other measures were taken for

the speedier adjustment of the affair by compromise. On the 29th of June,

1587, a public meeting was called at noon immediately after mass on the

great square of St. Julien, known as Parloir d’Amont, to which all hinds

and habitants (_manants et habitants_) were summoned by the ringing of the

church bell to consider the propriety and necessity of providing for the

said animals a place outside of the vineyards of St. Julien, where they

might obtain sufficient sustenance without devouring and devastating the

vines of the said commune. This meeting appears to have been held by the

advice of the plaintiffs’ advocate, François Fay, and at the suggestion of

the official. A piece of ground in the vicinity was selected and set apart

as a sort of insect enclosure, the inhabitants of St. Julien, however,

reserving for themselves the right to pass through the said tract of land,

“without prejudice to the pasture of the said animals,” and to make use of

the springs of water contained therein, which are also to be at the

service of the said animals; they reserve furthermore the right of working

the mines of ochre and other mineral colours found there, without doing

detriment to the means of subsistence of said animals, and finally the

right of taking refuge in this spot in time of war or in case of like

distress. The place chosen is called La Grand Feisse and described with

the exactness of a topographical survey, not only as to its location and

dimensions, but also as to the character of its foliage and herbage. The

assembled people vote to make this appropriation of land and agree to draw

up a conveyance of it “in good form and of perpetual validity,” provided

the procurator and advocate of the insects may, on visitation and

inspection of the ground, express themselves satisfied with such an

arrangement; in witness whereof the protocol is signed “L. Prunier,

curial,” and stamped with the seal of the commune.

But this attempt of the inhabitants to conciliate the insects and to

settle their differences by mutual concessions did not put an end to the

litigation. On the 24th of July, an “Extract from the Register of the

Curiality of St. Julien,” containing the proceedings of the public

meeting, was submitted to the court by Petremand Bertrand, procurator of

the plaintiffs, who called attention to the very generous offer made by

the commune and prayed the official to order the grant to be accepted on

the conditions specified, and to cause the defendants to vacate the

vineyards and to forbid them to return to the same on pain of

excommunication. Antoine Filliol, procurator of the insects, requested a

copy of the _procès-verbal_ and time for deliberation. The court complied

with this request and adjourned the case till “the first juridical day

after the harvest vacation,” which fell on the 11th of August, and again

by common consent till the 20th of the same month.

At this time, Charles Emanuel I., Duke of Savoy, was preparing to invade

the Marquisate of Saluzzo, and the confusion caused by the expedition of

troops over Mt. Cenis interfered with the progress of the trial, which was

postponed till the 27th of August, and again, since the passage of armed

men was still going on (_actento transitu armigerorum_), till the 3rd of

September, when Antoine Filliol declared that he could not accept for his

clients the offer made by the plaintiffs, because the place was sterile

and neither sufficiently nor suitably supplied with food for the support

of the said animals; he demanded, therefore, that the proposal be rejected

and the action dismissed with costs to the complainants (_petit agentes

repelli cum expensis_). The “egregious Petremand Bertrand,” in behalf of

the plaintiffs, denies the correctness of this statement and avers that

the spot selected and set apart as an abode for the insects is admirably

adapted to this purpose, being full of trees and shrubs of divers kinds,

as stated in the conveyance prepared by his clients, all of which he is

ready to verify. He insists, therefore, upon an adjudication in his

favour. The official took the papers of both parties and reserved his

decision, appointing experts, who should in the meantime examine the

place, which the plaintiffs had proffered as an asylum for the insects,

and submit a written report upon the fitness of the same.

The final decision of the case, after such careful deliberation and so

long delay, is rendered doubtful by the unfortunate circumstance that the

last page of the records has been destroyed by rats or bugs of some sort.

Perhaps the prosecuted weevils, not being satisfied with the results of

the trial, sent a sharp-toothed delegation into the archives to obliterate

and annul the judgment of the court. At least nothing should be thought

incredible or impossible in the conduct of creatures, which were deemed

worthy of being summoned before ecclesiastical tribunals and which

succeeded as criminals in claiming the attention and calling forth the

legal learning and acumen of the greatest jurists of their day.

In the margin of the last page are some interesting items of expenses

incurred: “_pro visitatione III flor._,” by which we are to understand

three florins to the experts, who were appointed to visit the place

assigned to the insects; then “_solverunt scindici Sancti Julliani incluso

processu Animalium sigillo ordinationum et pro copia que competat in

processu dictorum Animalium omnibus inclusis XVI flor._,” which may be

summed up as sixteen florins for clerical work including seals; finally,

“_item pro sportulis domini vicarii III flor._,” three florins to the

vicar, who acted as the bishop’s official and did not receive a regular

fee, but was not permitted to go away empty-handed. The date, which

follows, Dec. 20, 1587, may be assumed to indicate the time at which the

trial came to an end, after a pendency of more than eight months. (_Vide_

Appendix A.)

In the legal proceedings just described, two points are presented with

great clearness and seem to be accepted as incontestable: first, the right

of the insects to adequate means of subsistence suited to their nature.

This right was recognized by both parties; even the prosecution did not

deny it, but only maintained that they must not trespass cultivated fields

and destroy the fruits of man’s labour. The complainants were perfectly

willing to assign to the weevils an uncultivated tract of ground, where

they could feed upon such natural products of the soil as were not due to

human toil and tillage. Secondly, no one appears to have doubted for a

moment that the Church could, by virtue of its anathema, compel these

creatures to stop their ravages and cause them to go from one place to

another. Indeed, a firm faith in the existence of this power was the pivot

on which the whole procedure turned, and without it, the trial would have

been a dismal farce in the eyes of all who took part in it.

It is related in the chronicles of an ancient abbey (_Le Père Rochex:

Gloire de l’Abbaye et Vallée de la Novalaise_), that St. Eldrad commanded

the snakes, which infested the environs of a priory in the valley of

Briançon, to depart, and, taking a staff in his hand, conducted them to a

desert place and shut them up in a cave, where they all miserably

perished. Perhaps the serpent, which suffered Satan to take possession of

its seductive form and thus played such a fatal part in effecting the fall

of man and in introducing sin into the world, may have been regarded as

completely out of the pale and protection of law, and as having no rights

which an ecclesiastical excommunicator or a wonder-working saint would be

bound to respect. As a rule, however, such an arbitrary abuse of

miraculous power to the injury or destruction of God’s creatures was

considered illegal and unjustifiable, although irascible anchorites and

other holy men under strong provocation often gave way to it. Mediæval

jurists frowned upon summary measures of this sort, just as modern lawyers

condemn the practice of lynch-law as mobbish and essentially seditious,

and only to be excused as a sudden outburst of public indignation at some

exceptionally brutal outrage.

Properly speaking, animals cannot be excommunicated, but only

anathematized; just as women, according to old English law, having no

legal status of their own and not being bound in frankpledge as members of

the decennary or tithable community, could not be outlawed, but only

“waived” or abandoned. This form of ban, while differing theoretically

from actual outlawry, was practically the same in its effects upon the

individual subjected to it. Excommunication is, as the etymology of the

word implies, the exclusion from the communion of the Church and from

whatever spiritual or temporal advantages may accrue to a person from this

relation. It is one of the consequences of an anathema, but is limited in

its operation to members of the ecclesiastical body, to which the lower

animals do not belong. This was the generally accepted view, and is the

opinion maintained by Gaspard Bailly, advocate and councillor of the

Sovereign Senate of Savoy, in his _Traité des Monitoires, avec un

Plaidoyer contre les Insects_, printed at Lyons in 1668, but it has not

always been held by writers on this subject, some of whom do not recognize

this distinction between anathema and excommunication on the authority of

many passages of Holy Writ, affirming that, as the whole creation was

corrupted by the fall, so the atonement extends to all living creatures,

which are represented as longing for the day of their redemption and

regeneration.

One of the strong points made by the counsel for the defence in

prosecutions of this kind was that these insects were sent to punish man

for his sins, and should therefore be regarded as agents and emissaries of

the Almighty, and that to attempt to destroy them or to drive them away

would be to fight against God (_s’en prendre à Dieu_). Under such

circumstances, the proper thing to do would be, not to seek legal redress

and to treat the noxious creatures as criminals, but to repent and humbly

to entreat an angry Deity to remove the scourge. This is still the

standpoint of Christian orthodoxy, Protestant as well as Catholic, and the

argument applies with equal force to the impious and atheistic

substitution of Paris green and the chlorate of lime for prayer and

fasting as exterminators of potato-bugs. The modern, like the mediæval

horticulturist may ward off devouring vermin from his garden by the use of

ashes, but he strews them on his plants instead of sprinkling them on his

own head, and thus indicates to what extent scientific have superseded

theological methods in the practical affairs of life.

Thomas Aquinas, the “angelic doctor,” in his _Summa Theologiæ_ raises the

query, whether it is permissible to curse irrational creatures (_utrum

liceat irrationabiles creaturas adjurare_). He states, in the first place,

that curses and blessings can be pronounced only upon such things as are

susceptible of receiving evil or good impressions from them, or in other

words, upon sentient and rational beings, or upon irrational creatures and

insentient things in their relation to rational beings, so that the latter

are the objects ultimately aimed at and favourably or unfavourably

affected. Thus God cursed the earth, because it is essential to a man’s

subsistence; Jesus cursed the barren fig-tree symbolizing the Jews, who

made a great show of leafage in the form of rites and ceremonies, but bore

no fruits of righteousness; Job cursed the day on which he was born,

because he took from his mother’s womb the taint of original sin; David

cursed the rocks and mountains of Gilboa, because they were stained with

the blood of “the beauty of Israel”; in like manner the Lord sends locusts

and blight and mildew to destroy the harvests, because these are

intimately connected with the happiness of mankind, whose sins he wishes

to punish.

It is laid down as a legal maxim by mediæval jurisprudents that no animal

devoid of understanding can commit a fault (_nec enim potest animal

injuriam fecisse quod sensu caret_). This doctrine is endorsed by the

great theologian and scholastic Thomas of Aquino. If we regard the lower

animals, he says, as creatures coming from the hand of God and employed by

him as agents for the execution of his judgments, then to curse them would

be blasphemous; if, on the other hand, we curse them _secundem se_, i.e.

merely as brute beasts, then the malediction is odious and vain and

therefore unlawful (_est odiosum et vanum et per consequens illicitum_).

There is, however, another ground, on which the right of excommunication

or anathematization may be asserted and fully vindicated, namely, that the

lower animals are satellites of Satan “instigated by the powers of hell

and therefore proper to be cursed,” as the Doctor angelicus puts it.

Chassenée refers to this opinion in the treatise already cited (I. § 75),

and adds “the anathema then is not to be pronounced against the animals as

such, but should be hurled inferentially (_per modum conclusionis_) at the

devil, who makes use of irrational creatures to our detriment.” This

notion seems to have been generally accepted in the Middle Ages, and the

fact that evil spirits are often mentioned in the Bible metaphorically or

symbolically as animals and assumed to be incarnate in the adder, the asp,

the basilisk, the dragon, the lion, the leviathan, the serpent, the

scorpion, etc., was considered confirmatory of this view.

But not all animals were regarded as diabolical incarnations; on the

contrary, many were revered as embodiments and emblems of divine

perfections. In a work entitled _Le Liure du Roy Modus et de la Reyne

Racio_ (The Book of King Mode and Queen Reason), which, as the colophon

records, was “printed at Chambery by Anthony Neyret in the year of grace

one thousand four hundred and eighty-six on the thirtieth day of October,”

King Mode discourses on falconry and venery in general. Queen Reason

brings forward, in reply to these rather conventional commonplaces,

“several fine moralities,” and dilates on the natural and mystic qualities

of animals, which she divides into two classes, sweet beasts (_bestes

doulces_) and stenchy beasts (_bestes puantes_). Foremost among the sweet

beasts stands that which Milton characterizes as

“Goodliest of all the forest, hart and hind.”

According to the Psalmist, the hart panting after the water-brooks

represents the soul thirsting for the living God and is the type of

religious ardour and aspiration. It plays an important part in the legends

of saints, acts as their guide, shows them where holy relics are

concealed, and causes St. Eustace and St. Hubert to abandon the chase and

to lead lives of pious devotion by appearing to them with a luminous cross

between its antlers. The ten branches of its horns symbolize the ten

commandments of the Old Testament and signify in the Roman ritual the ten

fingers of the outstretched hand of the priest as he works the perpetual

miracle of transubstantiation of the eucharist.

Chief of the stenchy beasts is the pig. In paganism, which to the

Christians was merely devil-worship, the boar was an object of peculiar

adoration; for this reason the farrow of the sow is supposed to number

seven shotes, corresponding to the seven deadly sins. To the same class of

offensive beasts belong the wolf, typical of bad spiritual shepherds, and

the fox, which is described as follows: “Reynard is a beast of small size,

with red hair, a long bushy tail and an evil physiognomy, for his visage

is thin and sharp, his eyes deep-set and piercing, his ears small,

straight and pointed; moreover he is deceitful and tricky above all other

beasts and exceedingly malicious.” “We are all,” adds Queen Reason in a

moralizing strain, “more or less of the brotherhood of Saint Fausset,

whose influence is now-a-days quite extended.” Among birds the raven is

pre-eminently a malodorous creature and imp of Satan, whereas the dove is

a sweet beast and the chosen vessel for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit,

the form in which the third person of the Trinity became incarnate.

This division of beasts corresponds in principle to that which is given in

the Avesta, and according to which all animals are regarded as belonging

either to the good creation of Ahuramazda or to the evil creation of

Angrô-mainyush. The world is the scene of perpetual conflict between these

hostile forces summed up in the religion and ethics of Zarathushtra as the

trinity of the good thought, the good word, and the good deed (_humata_,

_hûkhta_, _huvarshta_), which are to be fostered in opposition to the evil

thought, the evil word, and the evil deed (_dushmata_, _duzhûkhta_,

_duzhvarshta_), which are to be constantly combated and finally

suppressed. Every man is called upon by the Iranian prophet to choose

between these contraries; and not only the present and future state of his

own soul, the complexion of his individual character, but also the welfare

of the whole world, the ultimate destiny of the universe, depend, to no

inconsiderable extent, upon his choice. His thoughts, words, and deeds do

not cease with the immediate effect which they are intended to produce,

but, like force in the physical world, are persistent and indestructible.

As the very slightest impulse given to an atom of matter communicates

itself to every other atom, and thus disturbs the equilibrium of the

globe--the footfall of a child shaking the earth to its centre--so the

influence of every human life, however small, contributes to the general

increase and ascendency of either good or evil, and helps to determine

which of these principles shall ultimately triumph. In the universal

strife of these “mighty opposites,” the vicious are the allies of the

devil; while the virtuous are not merely engaged in working out their own

salvation, but have also the ennobling consciousness of being

fellow-combatants with the Deity, who needs and appreciates their services

in overcoming the adversary. This sense of solidarity with the Best and

the Highest imparts additional elevation and peculiar dignity to human

aims and actions, and lends to devotion a warmth of sympathy and fervour

of enthusiasm springing from personal attachment and loyalty, which it is

difficult for the Religion of Humanity to inspire. The fact, too, that

evil exists in the world, not by the will and design of the Good Being,

but in spite of him, and that all his powers are put forth to eradicate

it, while detracting from his omnipotence, frees him from all moral

obliquity and exalts his character for benevolence, thus rendering him far

more worthy of love and worship and a much better model for human

imitation than that “dreadful idealization of wickedness” which is called

God in the Calvinistic creed. The idea that the humblest person may, by

the purity and rectitude of his life, not only strengthen himself in

virtue, but also increase the actual aggregate of goodness in the universe

and even endue the Deity with greater power and aggressive energy in

subduing and extirpating evil, is surely a sublime thought and a source of

lofty inspiration and encouragement in well-doing, although it has been

degraded by Parsi Dasturs--as all grand conceptions and ideals are apt to

be under priestly influences--into a ridiculous and childish hatred of

snakes, scorpions, frogs, lizards, water-rats, and other animals supposed

to have been produced by Angrô-mainyush.

Plato held a similar theory of creation, regarding it not as the

manifestation of pure benevolence endowed with almighty power, but rather

as the expression of perfect goodness working at disadvantage in an

intractable material, which by its inherent stubbornness prevented the

full embodiment and realization of the original purpose and desire of the

Creator or Cosmourgos, who was therefore obliged to content himself with

what was, under the circumstances, the only possible, but by no means the

best imaginable, world. The Manicheans attributed the same unsatisfactory

result to the activity of an evil principle, which thwarted the complete

actualization of the designs of the Deity. So conspicuous, indeed, is the

defectiveness of nature as a means of promoting the highest conceivable

human happiness, so marked and manifold are the causes of suffering in all

spheres of sentient existence, and so often do the elements seem to

conspire for the destruction of mankind, raging relentlessly like a wild

beast

“Red in tooth and claw

With ravin,”

that every cosmogony has been compelled to assume the persistent

intervention of some malignant spirit or perverse agency as the only

rational explanation of such a condition of things. The orthodox

Christianity of to-day gives over the earth entirely to the sovereignty of

Satan, the successful usurper of Eden, and instead of bidding the

righteous to look forward to the final re-enthronement and absolute

supremacy of truth and goodness in this world as the

“One far-off divine event,

To which the whole creation moves,”

consoles them with the vague promise of compensation in a future state of

being. Even this remote prospect of redemption is confined to a select

few; not only is the earth destined to be burned with fire on account of

its utter corruption, but the great majority of its inhabitants are doomed

to eternal torments in the abode of evil spirits.

Scientific research also leads to the same conclusions in respect to the

incompleteness of Nature’s handiwork, which it is the function of art and

culture to amend and improve. Everywhere the correcting hand and

contriving brain of man are needed to eliminate the worthless and noxious

productions, in which Nature is so fatally prolific, and to foster and

develop those that are useful and salutary, thus beautifying and ennobling

all forms of vegetable and animal life. By a like process man himself has

attained his present pre-eminence. Through long ages of strife and

struggle he has emerged from brutishness and barbarism, and rising by a

slow, spiral ascent, scarcely perceptible for generations, has been able

gradually to

“Move upward, working out the beast,

And let the ape and tiger die.”

The more man increases in wisdom and intellectual capacity, the more

efficient he becomes as a co-worker with the good principle. At the same

time, every advance which he makes in civilization brings with it some new

evil for him to overcome; or, as the Parsi would express it

mythologically, every conquest achieved by Ahuramazda and his allies

stimulates Angrômainyush and his satellites to renewed exertions, who

convert the most useful discoveries, like dynamite, into instruments of

diabolical devastation. The opening of the Far West in the United States

to agriculture and commerce, and the completion of the Pacific Railroad,

not only served to multiply and diffuse the gifts of the beneficent and

bountiful spirit (_speñtô mainyush_), but also facilitated the propagation

and spread of the plagues of the grasshopper and the Colorado beetle. The

power of destruction insidiously concealed in the minutest insect organism

often exceeds that of the tornado and the earthquake, and baffles the most

persistent efforts of human ingenuity to resist it. The genius and energy

of Pasteur were devoted for years to the task of detecting and destroying

a microscopic parasite, which threatened to ruin for ever the silk

industry of France; and the Phylloxera and Doryphora still continue to

ravage with comparative impunity the vineyards of Europe and the

potato-fields of America, defying at once all the appliances of science

for their extermination and all the attempts of casuistic theology to

reconcile such scourges with a perfectly benevolent and omnipotent Creator

and Ruler of the Universe. It is the observation of phenomena like these

that confirms the modern Parsi in the faith of his fathers, and reveals to

him, in the operations of nature and the conflicts of life, unquestionable

evidences of a contest between warring elements personified as Hormazd

and Ahriman, the ultimate issue of which is to be the complete triumph of

the former and the consequent purification and redemption of the world

from the curse of evil. The Parsi, however, recognizes no Saviour, and

repudiates as absurd and immoral any scheme of atonement whereby the

burden of sin can be shifted from the shoulders of the guilty to those of

an innocent, vicarious victim. Every person must be redeemed by his own

good thoughts, words, and deeds, as creation must be redeemed by the good

thoughts, words, and deeds of the race. After death, the character of each

individual thus formed appears to him, either in the form of a beautiful

and brilliant maiden, who leads him over the Chinvad (or gatherer’s)

bridge, into the realms of everlasting light, or in the form of a foul

harlot, who thrusts him down into regions of eternal gloom.

But to return from this digression; it is not only in the Venidad that

certain classes of animals are declared to be creations of the archfiend,

and therefore embodiments of devils; additional proofs of this doctrine

were derived by mediæval writers from biblical and classical sources. A

favourite example was the metamorphosis of Nebuchadnezzar, who, when given

over to Satan, dwelt with the beasts of the field and ate grass as oxen,

while his hair grew like eagles’ feathers and his nails like birds’

claws. Still more numerous and striking instances of this kind were drawn

from pagan mythology, which, being of diabolical origin, would naturally

be prolific of such phenomena. Thus, besides centaurs and satyrs, “dire

chimeras” and other “delicate monsters,” there were hybrids like the

semi-dragon Cecrops and transformations by which Io became a heifer,

Dædalion a sparrow-hawk, Corone a crow, Actæon a stag, Lyncus a lynx, Mæra

a dog, Calisto a she-bear, Antigone a stork, Arachne a spider, Iphigenia a

roe, Talus a partridge, Itys a pheasant, Tereus Ascalaphus and Nyctimene

owls, Philomela a nightingale, Progne a swallow, Cadmus and his spouse

Harmonia snakes, Decertis a fish, Galanthis a weasel, and the warriors of

Diomedes birds, while the companions of Ulysses were changed by Circe, the

prototype of the modern witch, into swine. All these metamorphoses are

adduced as the results of Satanic agencies and proofs of the tendency of

evil spirits to manifest themselves in bestial forms.

Towards the end of the ninth century the region about Rome was visited by

a dire plague of locusts. A reward was offered for their extermination and

the peasants gathered and destroyed them by millions; but all efforts were

in vain, since they propagated faster than it was possible to kill them.

Finally Pope Stephen VI. prepared great quantities of holy water and had

the whole country sprinkled with it, whereupon the locusts immediately

disappeared. The formula used in consecrating the water and devoting it to

this purpose implies the diabolical character of the vermin against which

it was directed: “I adjure thee, creature water, I adjure thee by the

living God, by Him, who at the beginning separated thee from the dry land,

by the true God, who caused thee to fertilize the garden of Eden and

parted thee into four heads, by Him, who at the marriage of Cana changed

thee into wine, I adjure thee that thou mayst not suffer any imp or

phantom to abide in thy substance, that thou mayst be indued with

exorcising power and become a source of salvation, so that when thou art

sprinkled on the fruits of the field, on vines, on trees, on human

habitations in the city or in the country, on stables, or on flocks, or if

any one may touch or taste thee, thou shalt become a remedy and a relief

from the wiles of Satan, that through thee plagues and pestilence may be

driven away, that through contact with thee weevils and caterpillars,

locusts and moles may be dispersed and the maliciousness of all visible

and invisible powers hostile to man may be brought to nought.” In the

prayers which follow, the water is entreated to “preserve the fruits of

the earth from insects, mice, moles, serpents and other foul spirits.”

This subject was treated in a lively and entertaining manner by a Jesuit

priest, Père Bougeant, in a book entitled _Amusement Philosophique sur le

Langage des Bestes_, which was written in the form of a letter addressed

to a lady and published at Paris in 1739. In the first place, the author

refers to the intelligence shown by animals and refutes the Cartesian

theory that they are mere machines or animated automata. This tenet, we

may add, was not original with Descartes, but was set forth at length by a

Spanish physician, Gomez Pereira, in a bulky Latin volume bearing the

queer dedicatory title: “_Antoniana Margarita opus nempe physicis, medicis

ac theologis non minus utile quam necessarium_,” and printed in 1554,

nearly a century before the publication of Descartes’ _Meditationes de

prima philosophia and Principia philosophiae_, which began a new epoch in

the history of philosophy.

If animals are nothing but ingenious pieces of mechanism, argues the

Jesuit father, then the feelings of a man towards his dog would not differ

from those which he entertains towards his watch, and they would both

inspire him with the same kind of affection. But such is not the case.

Even the strictest Cartesian would never think of petting his chronometer

as he pets his poodle, or would expect the former to respond to his

caresses as the latter does. Practically he subverts his own metaphysical

system by the distinction which he makes between them, treating one as a

machine and the other as a sentient being, endowed with mental powers and

passions corresponding, in some degree, to those which he himself

possesses. We infer from our own individual consciousness that other

persons, who act as we do, are free and intelligent agents, as we claim to

be. The same reasoning applies to the lower animals, whose manifestations

of joy, sorrow, hope, fear, desire, love, hatred and other emotions, akin

to those passing in our own minds, prove that there is within them a

spiritual principle, which does not differ essentially from the human

soul.

But this conclusion, he adds, is contrary to the teachings of the

Christian religion, since it involves the immortality of animal souls and

necessitates some provision for their reward or punishment in a future

life. If they are capable of merits and demerits and can incur praise and

blame, then they are worthy of retribution hereafter and there must be a

heaven and a hell prepared for them, so that the pre-eminence of a man

over a beast as an object of God’s mercy or wrath is lost. “Beasts, in

that case, would be a species of man or men a species of beast, both of

which propositions are incompatible with the teachings of religion.” The

only means of reconciling these views, endowing animals with intellectual

sense and immortal souls without running counter to Christian dogmas, is

to assume that they are incarnations of evil spirits.

Origen held that the scheme of redemption embraced also Satan and his

satellites, who would be ultimately converted and restored to their

primitive estate. Several patristic theologians endorsed this notion, but

the Church rejected it as heretical. The devils are, therefore, from the

standpoint of Catholic orthodoxy, irrevocably damned and the blood of

Christ has made no atonement for them. But, although their fate is sealed

their torments have not yet begun. If a man dies in his sins, his soul, as

soon as it departs from his body, receives its sentence and goes straight

to hell. The highest ecclesiastical authorities have decided that this is

not true of devils, who, although condemned to everlasting fire, do not

enter upon their punishment until after the judgment-day. This view is

supported by many passages and incidents of Holy Writ. Thus Christ

declares that, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he shall say

unto them on his left hand, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting

fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Here it is not stated that

the devils are already burning, but that the fire has been “prepared” for

them, a form of expression which leads us to infer that they were not yet

in it. Again the devils, which Christ drove out of the two “exceeding

fierce” demoniacs, protested against such interference, saying, “Art thou

come hither to torment us before the time?” This question has no

significance, unless we suppose that they had a right to inhabit such

living beings as had been assigned to them, until the time of their

torment should come on the last day. Père Bougeant is furthermore of the

opinion that, when these devils were sent miraculously and therefore

abnormally into the swine, they came into conflict with the devils already

in possession of the pigs, and thus caused the whole herd to run violently

down a steep place into the sea. Even a hog, he thinks, could not stand it

to harbour more than one devil at a time, and would be driven to suicide

by having an intrinsic and superfluous demon conjured into it. A still

more explicit and decisive declaration on this point is found in the

Epistle of Jude and the Second Epistle of Peter, where it is stated that

the angels which kept not their first estate the Lord hath reserved in

everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.

These words are to be understood figuratively as referring to the

irrevocableness of their doom and the durance vile to which they are

meanwhile subjected. That they are held in some sort of temporary custody

and are not actually undergoing, but still awaiting the punishment, which

divine justice has imposed upon them, the sacred scriptures and the

teachings of the Church leave no manner of doubt.

Now the question arises as to what these legions of devils are doing in

the meantime. Some of them are engaged in “going to and fro in the earth

and walking up and down in it,” in order to spy out and take advantage of

human infirmities. God himself makes use of them to test the fealty of men

and their power of holding fast to their integrity under severe

temptations, just as the Creator made fossils and concealed them in the

different strata of the earth, in order to see whether Christian faith in

the truth of revelation would be strong enough to resist the seductions of

“science falsely so called.” Other devils enter into living human bodies

and give themselves up to evil enchantments as wizards and witches; others

still reanimate corpses or assume the form and features of the dead and

wander about as ghosts and hobgoblins. Not only were pagans regarded by

the Christian Church as devil-worshippers and exorcised before being

baptized, but it is also a logical deduction from the doctrine of original

sin, that a devil takes possession of every child as soon as it is born

and remains there until expelled by an ecclesiastical functionary, who

combines the office of priest with that of conjurer and is especially

appointed for this purpose. Hence arose the necessity of abrenunciation,

as it was called, which preceded baptism in the Catholic Church and which

Luther and the Anglican reformers retained. Before the candidate was

christened he was exorcised and adjured personally, if an adult, or

through a sponsor, if an infant, to “forsake the devil and all his works.”

These words, which still hold a place in the ritual, but are now repeated

in a perfunctory manner by persons, who have no conception of the magic

potency formerly ascribed to them, are a survival of the old formula of

exorcism. In the seventeenth century there was a keen competition between

the Roman Catholic and the Lutheran clergy in casting out devils, the

former claiming that to them alone had been transmitted the exorcising

power conferred by Christ upon his apostles. The Protestant churches

finally gave up the hocus-pocus and during the eighteenth century it fell

into general discredit and disuse among them, although some of the

stiffest and most conservative Lutherans never really abandoned it in

principle and have recently endeavoured to revive it in practice.

The Catholic Church, on the contrary, still holds that men, women and

cattle may be possessed by devils and prescribes the means of their

expulsion. In a work entitled _Rituale ecclesiasticum ad usum clericorum

S. Fransisci_ by Pater Franz Xaver Lohbauer (Munich, 1851), there is a

chapter on the mode of helping those who are afflicted by demons (_Modus

juvandi afflictos a daemone_). The author maintains that nearly all

so-called nervous diseases, hysteria, epilepsy, insanity, and milder forms

of mental alienation, are either the direct result of diabolical agencies

or attended and greatly aggravated by them. A sound mind in a sound body

may make a man devil-proof, but Satan is quick to take advantage of his

infirmities in order to get possession of his person. The adversary is

constantly lying in wait watching for and trying to produce physical

derangements as breaches in the wall, through which he may rush in and

capture the citadel of the soul. In all cases of this sort the priest is

to be called in with the physician, and the medicines are to be blessed

and sprinkled with holy water before being administered. Exorcisms and

conjurations are not only to be spoken over the patient, but also to be

written on slips of consecrated paper and applied, like a plaster, to the

parts especially affected. The physician should keep himself supplied with

these written exorcisms, to be used when it is impossible for a priest to

be present. As with patent medicines, the public is warned against

counterfeits, and no exorcism is genuine unless it is stamped with the

seal and bears the signature of the bishop of the diocese. According to

Father Lohbauer, the demon is the efficient cause of the malady, and there

can be no cure until the evil one is cast out. This is the office of the

priest; the physician then heals the physical disorder, repairing the

damage done to the body, and, as it were, stopping the gaps with his drugs

so as to prevent the demon from getting in again. Thus science and

religion are reconciled and work together harmoniously for the healing of

mankind.

The Catholic Church has a general form of _Benedictio a daemone

vexatorum_, for the relief of those vexed by demons; and Pope Leo XIII.,

who was justly esteemed as a man of more than ordinary intelligence and

more thoroughly imbued with the modern spirit than any of his

predecessors, composed and issued, November 19, 1890, a formula of

_Exorcismus in Satanam et Angelos Apostatas_ worthy of a place in any

mediæval collection of conjurations. His Holiness never failed to repeat

this exorcism in his daily prayers, and commended it to the bishops and

other clergy as a potent means of warding off the assaults of Satan and of

casting out devils. In 1849 the Bishop of Passau published a _Manuale

Benedictionum_, and as late as 1893 Dr. Theobald Bischofberger described

and defended the practice of the papal see, in this respect, in a brochure

printed in Stuttgart and entitled _Die Verwaltung des Exorcistats nach

Massgabe der römischen Benediktionale_.

That these formulas are still deemed highly efficacious is evident from

the many recent cases in which they have been employed. Thus in 1842 a

devil named Ro-ro-ro-ro took possession of “a maiden of angelic beauty” in

Luxemburg and was cast out by Bishop Laurentius. This demon claimed to be

one of the archangels expelled from heaven, and appears to have rivalled

Parson Stöcker and Rector Ahlwardt in Anti-semitic animosity; when the

name of Jesus was mentioned, he cried out derisively: “O, that Jew! Didn’t

he have to drink gall?” When commanded to depart, he begged that he might

go into some Jew. The bishop, however, refused to give him leave and bade

him “go to hell,” which he forthwith did, “moaning as he went, in

melancholy tones, that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth,

‘Burning, burning, everlastingly burning in hell!’ The voice was so sad,”

adds the bishop, “that we should have wept for sheer compassion, had we

not known that it was the devil.”

Again, a lay brother connected with an educational institute in Rome

became diabolically possessed on January 3, 1887, and was exorcised by

Father Jordan. In this instance the leading spirit was Lucifer himself,

attended by a host of satellites, of whom Lignifex, Latibor, Monitor,

Ritu, Sefilie, Shulium, Haijunikel, Exaltor, and Reromfex were the most

important. It took about an hour and a half to cast out these demons the

first time, but they renewed their assaults on February 10th, 11th, and

17th, and were not completely discomfited and driven back into the

infernal regions until February 23rd, and then only by using the water of

Lourdes, which, as Father Jordan states, acted upon them like poison,

causing them to writhe to and fro. Lucifer was especially rude and saucy

in his remarks. Thus, for example, when Father Jordan said, “Every knee in

heaven and on the earth shall bow to the name of Jesus,” the fallen “Son

of the Morning” retorted, “Not Luci, not Luci--never!”

It would be easy to multiply authentic reports of things of this sort that

have happened within the memory of the present generation, such as the

exorcism of a woman of twenty-seven at Laas in the Tyrol in the spring of

1892, and the expulsion of an evil spirit from a boy ten years of age at

Wemding in Bavaria by a capuchin, Father Aurelian, July 13th and 14th,

1891, with the sanction of the bishops of Augsburg and Eichstätt. In the

latter case we have a circumstantial account of the affair by the exorcist

himself, who, in conclusion, uses the following strong language:

“Whosoever denies demoniacal possession in our days confesses thereby that

he has gone astray from the teaching of the Catholic Church; but he will

believe in it when he himself is in the possession of the devil in hell.

As for myself I have the authority of two bishops.” In a pamphlet on this

subject printed at Munich in 1892, and entitled _Die Teufelsaustreibung in

Wemding_, the author, Richard Treufels, takes the same view, declaring

that diabolical possession “is an incontestable fact, confirmed by the

traditions of all nations of ancient and modern times, by the unequivocal

testimony of the Old and New Testaments, and by the teaching and practice

of the Catholic Church.” Christ, he says, gave his disciples power and

authority over all devils to cast them out, and the same power is

divinely conferred upon every priest by his consecration, although it is

never to be exercised without the permission of his bishop.

Doubtless modern science by investigating the laws and forces of nature is

gradually diminishing the realm of superstition; but there are vast

low-lying plains of humanity that have not yet felt its enlightening and

elevating influence. It has been estimated that nine-tenths of the rural

population of Europe and ninety-nine hundredths of the peasantry, living

in the vicinity of a cloister and darkened by its shadow, believe in the

reality of diabolical possession and attribute most maladies of men and

murrain in cattle to the direct agency of Satan, putting their faith in

the “metaphysical aid” of the conjurer rather than in medical advice and

veterinary skill.