“’Twill be recorded for a precedent; And many an error, by the same example Will rush into the state: it cannot be.”
In the case of a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man guilty of buggery, at Montpellier, in 1565, as the quadruped was vicious and inclined to kick (_vitiosus et calcitrosus_), the executioner cut off its feet before consigning it to the flames. This mutilation was an arbitrary and extra-judicial act, dictated solely by considerations of personal convenience. Hangmen often indulged in capricious and supererogatory cruelty in the exercise of their patibulary functions, and mediæval as well as later writers on criminal jurisprudence repeatedly complain of this evil and call for reform. Thus Damhouder, in his _Rerum Criminalium Praxis_ (_cap. de carnifice_, p. 234), urges magistrates to be more careful in selecting persons for this important office, and not to choose evil-doers, “assiduous gamblers, public whoremongers, malicious back-biters, impious blasphemers, assassins, thieves, murderers, robbers, and other violators of the law as vindicators of justice.” Indeed, these hardened wretches sometimes took the law into their own hands. For example, on the 9th of June, 1576, at Schweinfurt in Franconia, a sow, which had bitten off the ear and torn the hand of a carpenter’s child, was given into custody, whereupon the hangman, without legal authority, took it to the gallows-green (Schindrasen) and there “hanged it publicly to the disgrace and detriment of the city.” For this impudent usurpation of judiciary powers Jack Ketch was forced to flee and never dared return. Hence arose the proverbial phrase Schweinfurter Sauhenker (Schweinfurt sow-hangman), used to characterize a low and lawless ruffian and vile fellow of the baser sort. It was not the mere killing of the sow, but the execution without a judicial decision, the insult and contempt of the magistracy and the judicatory by arrogating their functions, that excited the public wrath and official indignation.