In 1266, at Fontenay-aux-Roses, near Paris, a pig convicted of having eaten a child was publicly burned by order of the monks of Sainte Geneviève. In 1386, the tribunal of Falaise sentenced a sow to be mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs, and then to be hanged, for having torn the face and arms of a child and thus caused its death. Here we have a strict application of the _lex talionis_, the primitive retributive principle of taking an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As if to make the travesty of justice complete, the sow was dressed in man’s clothes and executed on the public square near the city-hall at an expense to the state of ten sous and ten deniers, besides a pair of gloves to the hangman. The executioner was provided with new gloves in order that he might come from the discharge of his duty, metaphorically at least, with clean hands, thus indicating that, as a minister of justice, he incurred no guilt in shedding blood. He was no common pig-killer, but a public functionary, a “master of high works” (_maître des hautes œuvres_), as he was officially styled. (_Vide_ Appendix G.)
We may add that the west wall of the south branch of the transept in the Church of the Holy Trinity (_Sainte-Trinité_) at Falaise in Normandy was formerly adorned with a fresco-painting of this execution, which is mentioned in _Statistique de Falaise_ (1827, t. I. 83), and more fully described by l’Abbé Pierre-Gilles Langevin, in his _Recherches Historiques sur Falaise_ (1814, p. 146). In a Supplement (p. 12) to this work, published several years later, the Abbé states that, about the year 1820, the entire church, including the fresco, was whitewashed, so that the picture has since then been invisible, and, so far as can be ascertained, no engraving or other copy of it has ever been made. Unfortunately, too, as the same writer informs us, _la châsse de la bannière_ (banner-holder) was fastened to the wall of the church on this very spot, thus covering and permanently destroying at least a portion of the painting.
In 1394, a pig was found guilty of “having killed and murdered a child in the parish of Roumaygne, in the county of Mortaing, for which deed the said pig was condemned to be haled and hanged by Jehan Petit, lieutenant of the bailiff.” The work was really done by the hangman (_pendart_), Jehan Micton, who received for his services the sum of “fifty souls tournois.” (_Vide_ Appendix H.) In another case the deputy bailiff of Mantes and Meullant presented a bill, dated March 15, 1403, which contained the following items of expense incurred for the incarceration and execution of an infanticide sow: