It would be hard to find any one less informed about such phenomena thanmyself; but of course I had heard of mineral springs so saturated withsilica that the leaves and twigs which fell into them were turned tostone after a time. I dimly comprehended the process, how the silicareplaced the vegetable matter, atom by atom, and the result was aduplicate of the object in stone. This, I confess, had never interestedme greatly, and as for the ancient fossils thus produced, they disgustedme. Boris, it appeared, feeling curiosity instead of repugnance, hadinvestigated the subject, and had accidentally stumbled on a solutionwhich, attacking the immersed object with a ferocity unheard of, in asecond did the work of years. This was all I could make out of thestrange story he had just been telling me. He spoke again after a longsilence.
The Church was not wholly consistent in its explanations of thesephenomena. In general the swarms of devouring insects and other noxiousvermin are assumed to have been sent at the instigation of Satan(instigante sathana, per[Pg 5] maleficium diabolicum), and are denounced anddeprecated as snares of the devil and his satellites (diaboli etministrorum insidias); again they are treated as creatures of God andagents of the Almighty for the punishment of sinful man; from this latterpoint of view every effort to exterminate them by natural means would beregarded as a sort of sacrilege, an impious attempt to war upon theSupreme Being and to withstand His designs. In either case, whether theywere the emissaries of a wicked demon or of a wrathful Deity, the onlyproper and permissible way of relief was through the offices of theChurch, whose bishops and other clergy were empowered to perform theadjurations and maledictions or to prescribe the penances andpropitiations necessary to produce this result. If the insects wereinstruments of the devil, they might be driven into the sea or banished tosome arid region, where they would all miserably perish; if, on the otherhand, they were recognized as the ministers of God, divinely delegated toscourge mankind for the promotion of piety, it would be suitable, afterthey had fulfilled their mission, to cause them to withdraw from thecultivated fields and to assign them a spot, where they might live incomfort without injury to the inhabitants. The records contain instancesof both kinds of treatment.
Solution La Malediction Des Loups-garous Pdf
It is a curious fact that the most recent and most radical theories ofjuridical punishment, based upon anthropological, sociological andpsychiatrical investigations, would seem to obscure and even to obliteratethe line of distinction between man and beast, so far as their capacityfor committing crime and their moral responsibility for their misdeeds areconcerned. According to Lombroso there are i delinquenti nati fra glianimali, beasts which are born criminals and wilfully and wantonly injureothers of their kind, violating with perversity and premeditation the lawsof the society in[Pg 15] which they live. Thus the modern criminologistrecognizes the existence of the kind of malefactor characterized byJocodus Damhouder, a Belgian jurist of the sixteenth century, as bestialaedens ex interna malitia; but although he might admit that the beastperpetrated the deed with malice aforethought and with the clearconsciousness of wrong-doing, he would never think of bringing such acreature to trial or of applying to it the principle of retributivejustice. This example illustrates the radical change which the theory ofpunishment has undergone in recent times and the far-reaching influencewhich it is beginning to exert upon penal legislation. In the second partof the present work the writer calls attention to this importantrevolution in the province of criminology, discussing as concisely aspossible its essential features and indicating its general scope andpractical tendencies, so far as they have been determined. It must beremembered, however, that, although the savage spirit of revenge, thateagerly demands blood for blood without the slightest consideration of theanatomical, physiological or psychological conditions upon which thecommission of the specific act depends, has ceased to be the controllingfactor in the enactment and execution of penal codes, the new system ofjurisprudence, based upon more enlightened conceptions of humanresponsibility, is still in an inchoate state and very far from havingworked out a satisfactory[Pg 16] solution of the intricate problem of the originand nature of crime and its proper penalty.
The culprits are a miscellaneous crew, consisting chiefly of caterpillars,flies, locusts, leeches,[Pg 136] snails, slugs, worms, weevils, rats, mice,moles, turtle-doves, pigs, bulls, cows, cocks, dogs, asses, mules, maresand goats. Only those cases are reported in which the accused were foundguilty; of these prosecutions, according to the above-mentioned registers,two belong to the ninth century, one to the eleventh, three to thetwelfth, two to the thirteenth, six to the fourteenth, thirty-four to thefifteenth, forty-five to the sixteenth, forty-three to the seventeenth,seven to the eighteenth and one to the nineteenth century. To this listmight be added other cases, such as the prosecution and malediction ofnoxious insects at Glurns in the Tyrol in 1519, at Als in Jutland in 1711,at Bouranton in 1733, at Lyö in Denmark in 1805-6, and at Pozega inSlavonia in 1866. In the latter case one of the largest of the locusts wasseized and tried and then put to death by being thrown into the water withanathemas on the whole species. A few years ago swarms of locustsdevastated the region near Kallipolis in Turkey, and a petition was sentby the Christian population to the monks of Mount Athos begging them tobear in solemn procession through the fields the girdle of St. Basilius,in order to expel the insects. This request was granted, and as thelocusts gradually disappeared, because there was little or nothing leftfor them to eat, the orthodox of the Greek Church from the bishop to thehumblest laymen firmly believed or at least maintained that a[Pg 137] miracle hadbeen wrought. Pious Mohammedans exorcise and ostracize locusts and otherharmful insects by reading the Koran aloud in the ravaged fields, as wasrecently done at Denislue in Asia Minor with satisfactory results. Also aslate as 1864 at Pleternica in Slavonia, a pig was tried and executed forhaving maliciously bitten off the ears of a female infant aged one year.The flesh of the condemned animal was cut in pieces and thrown to thedogs, and the head of the family, in which the pig lived, as is the customof pigs among the peasants of that country, was put under bonds to providea dowry for the mutilated child, so that the loss of her ears might notprove to be an insuperable obstacle to her marriage. (Amira, p. 578.) Itwould be incorrect to infer from the tables just referred to that nojudicial punishment of animals occurred in the tenth century or that thefifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries were peculiarly addictedto such practices. It is well known that during some of the darkestperiods of the Middle Ages and even in later times the registers of thecourts were very imperfectly kept, and in many instances the archives havebeen entirely destroyed. It is highly probable, therefore, that the casesof capital prosecution and conviction of animals, which have beencollected and printed by Berriat-Saint-Prix and others, however thoroughtheir investigations may have been, constitute only a very smallpercentage of those which actually took place.
The recent growth of sociology and especially the scientific study of thelaws of heredity thus tend, by exciting an intelligent interest in thepsychological solution of such questions, to render men less positive andperemptory in their judicial decisions. The intellectual horizon is sogreatly enlarged and so many possibilities are suggested, that it isdifficult for conscientious persons, strongly affected by thesespeculations and honestly endeavouring to make an ethical or penalapplication of them, to come to a prompt and practical conclusion in anygiven case. The voice of decision loses its magisterial sternness and
Anno domini millesimo quinquagesimo octuagesimo septimo et die sabattidecima sexta maii comparuerunt judicialiter coram nobis Vicario generaliMaurianne prefato Franciscus Ameneti conscindicus Sancti Julliani cumegregio Petremando Bertrandi ejus procuratore producens testimonialesconstitutionis facte eidem egregio Bertrandi die tertia decima aprilisproxime fluxi petit sibi provideri juxta supplicationem nobis porrectamparte scindicorum et communitatis Sancti Julliani exordiente Divinoprimitus implorato auxilio signatum Franciscus Faeti contra Animaliabruta ad formam muscarum volantia nuncupata Verpillions producens etiamacta et agitata superioribus annis coram predecessoribus nostris maxime deanno 1545 et die vicesima secunda mensis aprilis unacum ordinatione nostralata octava maii millesimo quingentesimo octuagesimo sexto et ne contraAnimalia ipsis inauditis procedi videatur petunt sibi provideri deadvocato et procuratore pro defensione si quam habeant aut habere possentdictorum Animalium se offerentes ad solutionem salarii illis per nosassignandi. Inde et nos Vicarius generalis Maurianne ne Animalia contraque agitur indeffensa remaneant deputamus eisdem pro procuratore egregiumAnthonium Fillioli licet absentem cui injungimus ut salario moderatoattenta oblatione conquerentium qui se offerunt satisfacere teneatur etdebeat ipsa[Pg 261] Animalia protegere et defendere eorumque jura et ne deconsilio alicujus periti sint exempta ipsis providemus de spectabilidomino Petro Rembaudi advocatum (sic) cui similiter injungimus ut debeateorum jura defendere salario moderato ut supra. Quamquidem deputationemmandamus eis notifficari et ipsis auditis prout juris fuerit ad ulterioraprovidebitur. Quo interim visa per nos quadam ordinatione fuit fiericertas processiones et alias devotiones in dicta ordinatione declaratasquas factas fuisse non edocetur ideo ne irritetur Deus propter nonadempletionem devotionum in ipsa ordinatione narratarum dicimus ipsasdevotiones imprimis esse fiendas per instantes et habitatores loci pro quopartes agunt quibus factis postea ad ulteriora procedemus prout jurisfuerit decernentes literas in talibus necessarias per quas comittimuscurato seu vicario loci quathenus contenta in dicta ordinatione in pronoecclesie publice declarare habeat populumque monere et exortari ut illasadimpleant infra terminum tam breve quam fieri poterit et de ipsisattestationem nobis transmittere. Datum in civitate Sancti JohannisMaurianne die anno permissis.
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