DF 6807

Thomas Olavi, vicar of the parish church in Savo (Savolax) in the diocese of Turku, once beat his servant Jakob two or three times with a kind of rope that is commonly used for bow-strings, after Jakob one evening had failed to give him the vessel used to carry grain in to feed the horses. Jakob was not hurt, but hit back with a sieve and put his hands around Thomas’s neck. Thomas tore away the hands and escaped his house and Jakob’s fury. Jakob followed Thomas and caught him, but during the fight Thomas threw Jakob to the ground. Jakob then clawed Thomas’s face with his fingers, and Thomas bit one of Jakob’s fingers until it was blue, but without causing any bloodshed. Other people intervened and separated the two assailants, who made their peace. Jakob begged Thomas’s forgiveness, which was granted, and he took up his previous work again. He worked for three weeks as before and said that he had no trouble with his finger. Then his right hand became swollen, probably because of neglect, and an incompetent doctor cut up the hand from inside and out. At the moment of his death, Jakob himself claimed in front of witnesses that this cut was the reason for his death, excusing Thomas from any responsibility. The regent Benedictus, provost of Rimini, refers the case to the diocesan bishop and commissions him to declare Thomas innocent and not irregular, on condition that the facts above are true.