Note 416 — Chapter I · PENAL METHODS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

Professor E. P. Evans throws an interesting side-light on this offence. “It seems rather odd,” he observes, “that the Christian lawgivers should have adopted the Jewish code against sexual intercourse with beasts, and then enlarged it so as to include the Jews themselves. The question was gravely discussed by jurists whether cohabitation of a Christian with a Jewess, or vice versa, constitutes sodomy. Damhouder (Prax. rer. crim. c. 96, n. 48) is of the opinion that it does, and Nicolaus Boër (Decis, 136, n. 5) cites the case of a certain Johannes Alardus or Jean Alard who kept a Jewess in his house in Paris and had several children by her; he was convicted of sodomy on account of this relation and burned, together with his paramour, ‘since coition with a Jewess is precisely the same as if a man should copulate with a dog’ (Döpl. Theat. ii. p. 157). Damhouder includes Turks and Saracens in the same category.”—The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals, p. 152. London, 1906.