Animals on Trial

The year was 1457, and the place the town of Sévigny in France. A five-year-old boy had been brutally killed, mauled to death, and the community sought justice. Turning to the legal system, a civil case was brought against the killer, and despite the horrific nature of the death of young Jehan Martin, court officials made certain that all legal proceedings went ahead by the books. In the end, the accused was found guilty and punished with execution of death by hanging. And with all formality, the pig who had attacked and killed the child was strung up by her hind legs and hanged until dead.

The recordings of animal trials in Medieval Europe are fascinating and (to us) bizarre. The juxtaposition of the formality of such court cases with the non-rational actors on trial seems nonsensical. But several explanations have been given by scholars of the subject.

For one, the documented trials really get going after the Black Death, when European society had already been turned upside down. Animal trials could also be a showy way to demonstrate the authority of local officials, a sort of demonstration of power when society was breaking apart.

I find fascinating that domestic animals like pigs and cows were tried in civil lawsuits and involved animals accused of murdering humans, but vermin like rats and bugs were tried in ecclesiastical lawsuits. The logic of the later cases was because the vermin couldn’t be rounded up and brought physically to a court, so Church officials tried these vermins’ souls — a guilty verdict resulted in excommunication of the crop-destroying pests. Nevermind that these beasties hadn’t been in communion with the Church before their alleged crimes.

But, when the trials occurred, it was at least a show of doing something. A semblance of order and a feeling like authorities were interested in attending to justice were better, it seems, than nothing.