“L’Église et la Pitié envers les animaux,” Paris, 1903. An English edition has been published by Messrs. Burns and Oates.
At an early date, in the heart of official Catholicism, an inconsistency appeared which is less easily explained than homilies composed for fishes or hymns for birds; namely, the strange business of animal prosecutions. Without inquiring exactly what an animal is, it is easy to bestow upon it either blessings or curses. The beautiful rite of the blessing of the beasts which is still performed once a year in many places involves no doctrinal crux. In Corsica the priest goes up to the high mountain _plateaux_ where the animals pasture in the summer, and after saying Mass in presence of all the four-footed family, he solemnly blesses them and exhorts them to prosper and multiply. It is a delightful scene, but it does not affect the conception of the moral status of animals, nor would that conception be affected by a right-down malediction or order to quit. What, however, can be thought of a regular trial of inconvenient or offending animals in which great care is taken, to keep up the appearance of fair-play to the defendants? Our first impression is, that it must be an elaborate comedy; but a study of the facts makes it impossible to accept this theory.
The earliest allusions to such trials that seem to exist belong to the ninth century, which does not prove that they were the first of the kind. One trial took place in 824 A.D. The Council of Worms decided in 866 that if a man has been killed by bees they ought to suffer death, “but,” added the judgment, “it will be permissible to eat their honey.” A relic of the same order of ideas lingers in the habit some people have of shooting a horse which has caused a fatal accident, often the direct consequence of bad riding or bad driving. The earlier beast trials of which we have knowledge were conducted by laymen, the latter by ecclesiastics, which suggests their origin in a folk-practice. A good, characteristic instance began on September 5, 1370. The young son of a Burgundian swineherd had been killed by three sows which seemed to have feared an attack on one of their young ones. All members of the herd were arrested as accomplices, which was a serious matter to their owners, the inmates of a neighbouring convent, as the animals, if convicted, would be burnt and their ashes buried. The prior pointed out that three sows alone were guilty; surely the rest of the pigs ought to be acquitted. Justice did not move quickly in those times; it was on September 12, 1379, that the Duke of Burgundy delivered judgment; only the three guilty sows and one young pig (what had _it_ done?) were to be executed; the others were set at liberty “notwithstanding that they had seen the death of the boy without defending him.” Were the original ones all alive after nine years? If so, would so long a respite have been granted them had no legal proceedings been instituted?