I returned to work on Tuesday from a long weekend spent with friends on the Isle of Wight. One of our evening activities was a quiz board game. Thanks to one question that came up, I’ve learned that in 1120, the Bishop of Laon, in France, excommunicated caterpillars. Now, you’re thinking, “Tell me more.” Naturally - this is very interesting - so I’ll tell you more.
I’ve checked the definition of excommunication. It means to “officially exclude someone - or something, I’ve learned - from participation in the sacraments and services of the Christian Church." So it’s just as I suspected, it was never necessary to excommunicate caterpillars because they don’t take communion. Caterpillars are not baptised, confirmed, married or any of the other sacraments. I think a caterpillar might sometimes go to church - but only by accident.
The Bishop of Laon actually wrote a letter to the caterpillars - to inform them of their excommunication - in which he also named the field mice with whom the caterpillars were conspiring. This wasn’t the last time that a priest told off a caterpillar. In 1585 - some 400 years later - the Grand Vicar of Valencia ordered the caterpillars to vacate his diocese, acting on the judgement of a city official which read, “we admonish the caterpillars to retire within six days.”
There is nothing in history that tells us how caterpillars have felt about being excommunicated. Maybe they feel nothing about it. Maybe nothing different. I don’t know how caterpillars feel. I don’t know if anyone knows how caterpillars feel. But priests and bishops are scholars so I’m sure they thought it through, and felt very strongly about it themselves.
Normally I journal half a day for Kevin’s Corner, but I’ve been pressed for time today so I’ve only been able to spend an hour on this while we were preparing for our pitch to Estée Lauder. My research during that time turned out a related passage which I’d like to read to you now.
THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF INSECTS, Harry B. Weiss
In the November 1926 issue of Entomological News, I wrote a little article entitled “Insects as Litigants.” During the meantime, I came into the possession of a copy of “The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals,” by E.P. Evans. [...] Students of the history of jurisprudence have long been familiar with the early capital punishments imposed upon pigs, cows, horses and other domestic animals by secular courts, as a penalty for homicide, and with the judicial proceedings instituted by ecclesiastical courts against rats, mice and insects in order to prevent their ravages to crops, and to expel them from orchards and fields by exorcism and excommunication. Domestic animals could be arrested, tried, convicted and executed just like a man, but as this was not possible in the case of insects, which were not subject to control by the civil authorities, or in fact by any human agency, the Church had to take them in hand and exercise its supernatural functions against them.
So there you have it. It makes perfect sense and thank God the church has been able to take hold of caterpillars, and bring them to account.
Just to wrap up then, I’ll mention a few other animals that have at one time been either excommunicated, banished or put on trial. Most of these have happened in France.
Pigs, goats, mice, leeches, weevils and cockchafers. I don’t know what a cockchafer is. An English vicar once excommunicated his cat for catching mice on Sundays. The goat example was actually in Russia. It was banished to Siberia.
Have a good weekend, after tomorrow.