CHAPTER II✦

MEDIÆVAL AND MODERN PENOLOGY

Recent change in the spirit of criminal jurisprudence-- Mediæval tribunals cut with the executioner’s sword the intricate knots which the modern criminalist essays to untie--Phlebotomy a panacea in medicine and law--Restless ghosts of criminals who died unpunished--Execution of vampires and were-wolves--Case of a were-wolf who devoured little children “even on Friday”--Pope Stephen VI. brings the corpse of his predecessor to trial--Mediæval and modern conceptions of culpability--Problems of psycho-pathological jurisprudence--Degrees of mental vitiation--Italians pioneers in the scientific study of criminality--Effects of these speculations upon legislation--Barbarity of mediæval penal justice--Gradual abolition of judicial torture--Cruel sentence pronounced by Carlo Borromeo--“Blue Laws” a great advance on contemporary English penal codes--Moral and penal responsibility--Atavism and criminality--Physical abnormities--Capacity and symmetry of the skull-- Circumvolutions of the brain--Tattooing not a peculiarity of criminals, but simply an indication of low æsthetic sense-- Theories of the origin and nature of crime--Intelligence not always to be measured by the size of the encephalon-- Remarkable exceptions in Gambetta, Bichat, Bischoff and Ugo Foscolo--Advanced criminalists justly dissatisfied with the penal codes of to-day--Measures proposed by Lombroso and his school--Their conclusions not sustained by facts--Crime through hypnotic suggestion--Difficulty of defining insanity--Coleridge’s definition too inclusive-- Predestination and evolution--Criminality among the lower animals--Punishment preventive or retributive-- Schopenhauer’s doctrine of responsibility for character-- Remarkable trial of a Swiss toxicomaniac, Marie Jeanneret--“Method in Madness” not uncommon--Social safety the supreme law--Application of this principle to “Cranks”--Spirit of imitation peculiarly strong in such classes--Contagiousness of crime--Criminology now in a period of transition p. 193