even the
crocodile are also mentioned.[52]

The social and legal attitude toward bestiality has reflected in part the
frequency with which it has been practiced, and in part the disgust mixed
with mystical and sacrilegious horror which it has aroused. 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. It would appear from the
_Penitentiale Pseudo-Romanum_ (which is earlier than the eleventh
century) that one year's penance was adequate for fornication
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 intercours