It has
sometimes been met merely by a fine, and sometimes the offender and his
innocent partner have been burnt together. In the middle ages and later
its frequency is attested by the fact that it formed a favorite topic with
preachers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is significant that
in the Penitentials,--which were criminal codes, half secular and half
spiritual, in use before the thirteenth century, when penance was
relegated to the judgment of the confessor,--it was thought necessary to
fix the periods of penance which should be undergone respectively by
bishops, priests and deacons who should be guilty of bestiality.
In Egbert's Penitential, a document of the ninth and tenth
centuries, we read (V. 22): "Item Episcopus cum quadrupede
fornicans VII annos, consuetudinem X, presbyter V, diaconus III,
clerus II." There was a great range in the penances for
bestiality, from ten years to (in the case of boys) one hundred
days. The mare is specially mentioned (Haddon and Stubbs,
_Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents_, vol. iii, p. 422). In
Theodore's Penitential, another Anglo-Saxon document of about the
same age, those who habitually fornicate with animals are
adjudged ten years of penance.
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