with a mare when committed by a layman (exactly the same as for simple fornication with a widow or virgin), and this was mercifully reduced to half a year if he had no wife.  (Wasserschleben, Die Bussordnungen der Abendlaendlichen Kirche, p. 366).  The Penitentiale Hubertense (emanating from the monastery of St. Hubert in the Ardennes) fixes ten years’ penance for sodomy, while Fulbert’s Penitential (about the eleventh century) fixes seven years for either sodomy or bestiality.  Burchard’s Penitential, which is always detailed and precise, specially mentions the mare, the cow and the ass, and assigns forty days bread and water and seven years penance, raised to ten years in the case of married men.  A woman having intercourse with a horse is assigned seven years penance in Burchard’s Penitential. (Wasserschleben, ib. pp. 651, 659.)

The extreme severity which was frequently exercised toward those guilty of this offense, was doubtless in large measure due to the fact that bestiality was regarded as a kind of sodomy, an offense which was frequently viewed with a mystical horror apart altogether from any actual social or personal injury it caused.  The Jews seem to have felt this horror; it was ordered that the sinner and his victim should both be put to death (Exodus, Ch. 22, v. 19; Leviticus, Ch. 20, v. 15).  In the middle ages, especially in France, the same rule often prevailed.  Men and sows, men and cows, men and donkeys were burnt together.  At Toulouse a woman was burnt for having intercourse with a dog.  Even in the seventeenth century a learned French lawyer, Claude Lebrun de la Rochette, justified such sentences.[53] It seems probable that even to-day, in the social and legal attitude toward bestiality, sufficient regard is not paid to the fact that this offense is usually committed either by persons who are morbidly abnormal or who are of so low a degree of intelligence that they border on feeble-mindedness.  To what extent, and on what grounds, it ought to be punished is a question calling for serious reconsideration.

FOOTNOTES: 

[33] For Krafft-Ebing’s discussion of the subject see Op. cit., pp. 530-539.

[34] In England it is not uncommon to use the term “unnatural offence;” this is an awkward and possibly misleading practice which should not be followed.  In Germany a similar confusion is caused by applying the term “sodomy” to these cases as well as to pederasty.  Krafft-Ebing considers that this error is due to the jurists, while the theologians have always distinguished correctly.  In this matter, he adds, science must be ancilla theologiae and return to the correct usage of words.

[35] This childish interest, with later abnormal developments, may be seen in History I of the Appendix to this volume.