In the long centuries when superstition held sway and the lines between humans and animals were more fluid than a flagon of ale, a most peculiar legal practice emerged across medieval Europe - the prosecution of animals. From pigs and pigeons to rats, bulls, and even the lowliest of flies, no creature was exempt from facing judicial scrutiny for alleged crimes against man or God. This bizarre legal tradition spanned over five centuries, indicting and often executing animals found guilty of trespassing, property destruction, or perpetrating violence against humans.
Richard Clements explains.
Trial of a sow and pigs at Lavegny.
The Rationale Behind the Madness
The notion of arraigning a barn swallow or bovine may seem utterly ludicrous today, but to medieval minds steeped in religious doctrine and folklore, it was a perfectly reasonable concept. The theological underpinning was that animals, having been granted a place in Biblical scripture and the Christian faith through stories like Noah's Ark, possessed souls and a degree of moral agency. As such, they could be held accountable for their misdeeds just like humans were.
Furthermore, canon law, which governed religious jurisdictions at the time, made little distinction between human and animal personhood. This blurring of boundaries, combined with widespread beliefs in sorcery, evil spirits taking animal form, and anthropomorphic folklore from Aesop's fables to Reynard the Fox, set the stage for animal prosecutions to take root across medieval society.
Farcical Yet Grim Proceedings
Despite their inherent absurdity, these trials followed strict court protocols with a sadistic kind of rigour. Animals were afforded legal counsel, permitted to testify in their own defence (through interpreters, of course!), and endured the same torturous punishments as convicted human criminals if found guilty.
One particularly infamous example of these trials is depicted in the 1995 film, "The Hour of the Pig," which dramatizes the trial of a pig accused of murder in 15th-century France. While the film offers a dramatic interpretation, it highlights the bizarre reality of these proceedings.
Less extreme but no less farcical was the 1519 case of a group of canine delinquents indicted in the Swiss municipality of Basing for persistently disrupting church services with their barking and unpriestly habit of nipping at parishioners' legs. Found guilty of "blasphemous barking" and "unchristian conduct," they were excommunicated from the parish, a punishment likely of little consequence to the canine culprits.
Insect Eradications and Rat Trials
Of course, easier targets for the courts were the ubiquitous pests that plagued medieval life - insects and rodents. In 1478, a plague of locusts descended upon Berry, France, like a biblical hailstorm. After ecclesiastical appeals to get them to leave went unheeded, the insects were taken to court and found guilty of an array of charges, from trespassing to violence against the citizens. An edict of banishment was ordered and carried out through ritual burnings and exorcisms, a farcical attempt to control the uncontrollable.
In 1508, the curious case of Autun, France, saw the appointment of the curiously named "Attorneys for the Defence of the Rats." These brave (or perhaps foolhardy) souls argued valiantly on behalf of their rodent clients accused of ravaging the region's grain supplies. Ultimately, the rats lost the case, and professional rat catchers were hired to round them up and execute the court's sentence of death.
Last Rites at the Gallows
No case better exemplifies the intersection of legal propriety and deranged superstition than the trial of a Rouen pig in 1386. Dressed in a jacket and trousers (one can only imagine the indignity!), the condemned sow was tried, found guilty of killing and eating a human infant, confessed through an interpreter (though the details of this confession remain shrouded in mystery), and was promptly hanged in the public square while receiving its last rites from a priestly executioner. The scene, though documented in a woodcut from the era, defies logic and leaves one shuddering at the extremes of medieval justice.
These bizarre proceedings dragged on until the 18th century, finally fading out amid the Age of Enlightenment and humanity's tentative re-embrace of reason over hysteria and dogma. While manifestly ludicrous by modern standards, the tradition of prosecuting animals serves as an eerie window into a time when logic and hysteria shared an uneasy bedfellowship.
Conclusion
Absurd, merciless, yet strangely meticulous, the practice of indicting animals placed society's extremes on full display - the coexistence of elaborate legal systems, religious fervour, superstitious fear, and utter disregard for reason. With humans now firmly at the apex of the hierarchy of consciousness, such trials are rightly resigned to history's most astonishing legal curiosities. Though the very notion defies modern secular sensibilities, for centuries it was a grim reality when animals had their judgement day in court. Their stories, however, serve as a reminder of the strange and fascinating ways humanity has grappled with the natural world and our place within it.
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References
Evans, E.P. "The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals." London: Heinemann, 1906.
Hyland, Paul. "Animal Trials of the Middle Ages: An Overview." The Medieval Review, 2017.
BBC News. "When Animals Were Put on Trial." Available at: www.bbc.com/news
The Guardian. "The curious history of animal trials." Available at: www.theguardian.com
Barber, Malcolm. "Superstition and the Law in Medieval Europe." European History Quarterly, 1993.
