Note 43 — Chapter III · Demons and Familiars

The word bestialitas has theologically a far wider signification than the word bestiality. In 1222 a deacon, having been tried before Archbishop Langton, was burned at Oxford on a charge of bestiality. He had embraced Judaism in order to marry a Jewess. Professor E. P. Evans remarks: “It seems rather odd 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 Boer (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’ (Dopl. 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.