I've heard of times throughout history when animals were put on trial for various reasons, such as a rooster laying an egg or rats destroying property. However, I've recently seen folks saying that these weren't real cases, but actually the 17th-century equivalent of law school exam hypotheticals, much like my professors might populate our exams with Harry Potter characters, and that reports of such trials were misinterpreted by later readers.
So were animals actually put on trial in the past, or did somebody read an exam and misinterpret it as a real event?
I've written about one of these trials [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/mz1xrs/was_a_cow_convicted_of_sorcery_in_1740_paris/gvzj642/ s) so I'll expand that answer a little bit. Most of it is derived from Pastoureau (2015).
Animal trials definitely existed in Western Europe, with the bulk of them happening between the 14th and the 17th centuries. A compilation of about 200 animal trials was established by Edward Payson Evans in 1906. It is true that, as noted by historian Michel Pastoureau, the historiography of animal trials is "disappointing": it has been mostly treated as an amusing curiosa, and with the exception of "vermin" trials, information is scarcer than we'd like it to be. But records exist and many of these trials are well documented.
There were several kinds of animal trials.
Trials of domestic animals
They were often judged for killing or hurting people. The procedure was similar to that used for human beings: the animal was put in jail and kept there until its trial. There was a formal investigation and the animal was accused. The judge heard the witnesses and sometimes the animal's defender, a judgement was passed and told to the animal in its cell. When the punishment was death, execution was carried out usually by hanging. Burning alive, decapitation, strangling, drowning, and burying alive were also used.
Pigs are the most cited defendants in such trials: they were extremely common, they were wandering everywhere, and they were, to some extent, human-like. One typical crime committed by pigs was the killing and sometimes the eating of infants. One of the most famous case is that the Sow of Falaise, which was found guilty of killing a newborn in 1386. The trial lasted nine days and the sow was assisted by a defender. The sow was condemned to death, but she was first mutilated in same way as she had killed the child, dressed with human clothes (or given a human mask), and dragged to the execution site, where she was hanged (or suspended by her hind legs), in front of crowd that included numerous pigs. This story, mostly known through the receipt of payment sent to the executioner, had attained the status of "historical legend" through successive retelling and embellishments (Friedland, 2012). In 1394, a pig was accused not only of having eaten a child, but of having done so on Friday, an aggravating factor since Catholics refrain from eating meat on that day. In 1457, a sow confessed (under torture) having eaten a child and shared it with her piglets.
Other common culprits were horses, donkeys, sheep, dogs, and bovines. In 1499, in Beaupré, a "red-haired bull" was tried for having "furiously killed" the young boy in charge of keeping the herd. In 1621, in Leipzig, a cow was tried for having killed a woman (Evans, 1906).
Trials of vermins and wild animals
These were usually "vermins" such as rats, insects, caterpillars, worms or slugs, more rarely wolves or wild boars, accused of harming crops or herds. They were typically tried by religious courts. Catherine Chêne (1995) has studied a series of such trials that took place in the second half of the 15th century in the Lausanne diocese, notably against "white worms" (larvae of junebugs). The plaintiffs always represented a community. The procedure started with a gathering of the population and the complaints were heard; rogatory processions implored divine clemency. Then the trial itself began. A prosecutor was appointed, a bailiff went to the places damaged by the animals and ordered them to appear before the judge. The next day, a summons was issued against the animals, and they were ordered to leave the infested premises within three days. The judgement condemned them to be cursed and imprecations were pronounced. The execution of the judgement consistedd in a procession, a blessing of the place and a curse on the animals. It must be noted that the animals were sometimes granted a defense or even a spokesman, who argued that the defendants were lacking in reason, where themselves creatures of God, and had the right to feed themselves and live.
Bestiality trials
Bestiality was one of the most serious crimes, punished by death. Both the accused man or woman and their animal "accomplice" were to be burned alive, man and animal together if possible. This what happened to a man named Michel Maurin in 1553, accused by his wife to have "carnally known" a ewe on three occasions. Maurin first denied the crime, but, threatened with torture, he confessed that he had sex with the ewe one single time. The man and the sheep were put in a bag together and burned. One of the latest animal trials took place in Poitou in 1741: a young man accused of having sex with a cow was sentenced to be burned alive, while the cow was slaughtered and its remains buried. There are few bestiality trials recorded, possibly because the crime was considered to be so horrible that trial records were burned with the condemned.
The main reason for these trials was their examplary value: even jurists who acknowledged that animals could not understand what they had done, being animals, considered that it was necessary to show to the population that nobody, even pigs or cows, could escape justice.
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