We’ve already covered a few animal trials, but there are many more cases worth mentioning. Far from being an oddity, trying animals for crimes was a solemn and frequent affair, especially in medieval Europe. It was also legally important, persuading people that everything was under control—its control. And of course punishing “theft” whatever the species helped to prop up the notion of property.
Charges ranged from case to case but they all had one thing in common: they were batsh*t insane. In ascending order of lunacy, here are 10 of the worst offenders—listed by the species in the dock.
10. Monkeys
When, during the Napoleonic Wars, some English found a monkey on a beach, they were immediately suspicious. Its appearance followed the wreckage of a French ship nearby and this was the only survivor, washed to shore on debris, soaked through and miserable-looking. Having never seen a Frenchman (only propagandist caricatures with claws and tails), they took this monkey to be one. It also didn’t help that, as the French ship’s mascot, it was dressed as a human sailor. After a hasty trial right there on the beach, they found it guilty of espionage, sentenced it to death, and hanged it from the mast of a fishing boat. This was extrajudicial– mob law—unlike the others on this list. But unfortunately it wasn’t uncommon. Although frowned upon, people often took the law in their own hands when it came to punishing animals.
Disturbingly in this case, there may be more to the tale. According to one theory, it wasn’t a monkey they hanged but a child employed as a “powder monkey” for priming the cannons with gunpowder. Whatever the case, the people of Hartlepool are still known as “monkey hangers” today—although they’ve come to embrace the name. In fact, their football team’s mascot is a monkey called H’Angus. And in 2002 a mayoral candidate dressed as the monkey promised free bananas for school children (and won).
9. Termites
When the Portuguese invaded Brazil they took their insanity with them, embarrassing themselves in front of the natives by charging some termites with vandalism. Ironically, the plaintiffs were Franciscan friars—that is, followers of a man who five centuries earlier preached sharing and kinship with animals. Still, they sought to excommunicate the termites for eating their food and furniture.
It was actually the defense lawyer that most resembled Saint Francis, arguing that the termites had, like all of God’s creatures, a clear right to sustenance. He even claimed their industriousness put the idle grey friars to shame. Besides, he said, the termites were on the land first.
In January 1713, the trial finally ended with a “compromise”. The cloister of friars would set up a reservation where the termites could live undisturbed. The decision was announced to the termite mounds: “No sooner was the order of the prelatic judge promulgated by being read officially before the hills of the termites than they all came out and marched in columns to the place assigned.” Naturally, this was interpreted as proof of their submission to God.
8. Weevils
After ravaging some vineyards in a hamlet in France, weevils were personas non grata. But they had a good lawyer. The trial concluded, in the spring of 1546, with the judge ordering locals to beg for mercy from God, who, being the “supreme author of all that exists” had created the earth for all of his creatures. The hamlet also held three masses “in solemn procession with songs and supplications round the vineyards.” And it seems to have worked—for a time.
Forty years later, the weevils returned and were put on trial again. This second case, brought before “the prince-bishop of Maurienne, … the reverend lord his vicar-general and official”, and recorded on 29 folia with a very long title in Latin, lasted for several months. Again it was argued the people were guilty for incurring God’s wrath, since the weevils had the right to eat plants. The defense even pointed out it was “absurd and unreasonable” to apply human laws to insects. But the counsel for the plaintiffs, on the other hand, the local vine-growers, claimed the weevils were subject to man.
The case was adjourned repeatedly while each side considered the case. Eventually, the weevils’ legal team countered that even if they are subject to man, that doesn’t give us the right to punish them—especially with excommunication. That was God’s job. Two and a half months after the trial began, the people were ordered to set aside some land for the weevils, fenced off so they could live in peace. But it didn’t work. One month later, the case was back in court. The plaintiffs begged the judge to order the weevils to return to their enclosure under threat of excommunication. Meanwhile, the defense team said the enclosure was too barren with not enough food for the animals. Again, the case was adjourned numerous times and it wasn’t for another month and a half that a verdict was finally reached. What it was, however, we won’t ever know because the final page of the court records was eaten by weevils.
7. Cows
Because of their size, weight, and temper, cows were frequently charged with attacks. In 1314, for instance, a bull escaped from a farm in France and gored a man to death. Then it was captured by the Count of Valois’s men, imprisoned, and sentenced to hang. But since the Count had no jurisdiction in Moisy, the sentence was overturned (sadly after the bull had been killed).
There are numerous other examples of murderous cows being hanged. However, given the value of cows and bulls, they (like horses) were typically confiscated instead. In 12th-century Burgundy it was actually written into law that “if an ox or a horse commit one or several homicides, it shall not be condemned to death, but shall be taken by the Seignior [feudal lord] within whose jurisdiction the deed was perpetrated”, who would sell it and keep the profits. “But if other beasts or Jews do it,” the law continued, “they shall be hanged by the hind feet.”
As a rule, executed animals—even the organic grass-fed cows of the pre-industrial world—were never eaten as meat. Once an animal “had become the peer of man in blood-guiltiness and in judicial punishment,” it was felt that eating it “would savour of anthropophagy”, or cannibalism. So they’d usually get buried with human criminals. There were exceptions, though. One example is a cow killed in Ghent, Belgium, in 1578; its flesh was sold to a butcher in order to compensate the victim. But her head was impaled near the gallows.
6. Dogs
Dogs were different to livestock; they were already treated as people. Like women and serfs, they were even included in the weregild (insurance payable by their killers to their owners). In Old Germanic law, dogs (as well as cats and cocks) could even be witnesses in court if, for example, they were the only ones present when their owner’s house was burglarized. In this case, the homeowner would bring their dog to court, along with three straws from the roof thatch to symbolize the house.
Having sex with them, however, was—to Christian sensibilities—as bad as having sex with a Jew. In fact, when a Parisian man was burned alive for “coition with a Jewess,” or “sodomy,” the court said it was “precisely the same as if a man should copulate with a dog.” (Naturally, the woman was burned alive too.) Examples are many, but one stands out: In 1606 a Chartres man was sentenced to hang for sodomizing a dog, but he ran away before they could do it. So while authorities killed the victim with a knock on the head, they hanged a portrait of the rapist instead.
But dogs weren’t always sentenced to death. Sometimes they were simply imprisoned. This was the case in 1712 when a drummer’s dog bit a councilor in the leg; instead of execution, it was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment in the Narrenkötterlein, an iron cage over the marketplace.
5. Donkeys
Just like humans, animals were entitled to appeals. One donkey sentenced to hang, for example, was saved by appeal to a higher court and her sentence was commuted to a knock on the head.
Appeals could even lead to acquittal. In 1750 a donkey condemned for seducing her rapist was acquitted when the Vanvres parish priest delivered a certificate attesting to her good character. He and other parishioners of good standing, it read, were “willing to bear witness that she is in word and deed and in all her habits of life a most honest creature.”
Another donkey, or a mule rather, was not so popular. Raped by a man, it was sentenced to burn at Montpelier in 1565. Worse, because it was “vicious and inclined to kick” (vitiosus et calcitrosus, according to court records), the executioner took it upon himself to cut off its feet before burning—an extra-judicial mutilation for which he was presumably scolded. Courts didn’t like their hired thugs adding anything to the sentence.
4. Rats
Even as recently as the 19th century, rats were served a “writ of ejectment [or] … letter of advice … to induce them to quit any house.” And, because there was a good chance the rats wouldn’t read it, it was rubbed in grease to attract their attention. One such letter, from Maine, even expresses sympathy for the rats, advising them to leave 1 Seaview Street for 6 Incubator Street, where they could live in a cellar full of vegetables or a barn full of grain. It finished by advising the rats that if they didn’t leave, they’d be killed off with poison.
Centuries earlier, in the 1500s, rats were summoned to court for eating all the barley in Autun, a French province. The court knew they wouldn’t come and planned to punish the rodents accordingly. However, as their defense lawyer pointed out, there were too many rats in Autun for a single summons to suffice; it could never be seen by all the rats. The judge reluctantly agreed and ordered a second summons “to be published from the pulpits of all the parishes” in the province. Then, when they still failed to come, their defense lawyer argued that the cats on the route made the journey too dangerous for the rats. This meant they had “the right of appeal and [could] refuse to obey the writ”.
3. Caterpillars
In 1659, five Italian communes brought a complaint against caterpillars for devastating their crops. The summons were nailed to trees in the forests. And, while they didn’t show up for the trial, the caterpillars were conceded in court to have the same right “to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as man—as long as theirs didn’t infringe on the latter’s.
Talking of charismatic insects, even bees were put on trial. In 864, the Council of Worms (i.e. the Rhineland city, not the species) sentenced a hive to be suffocated for stinging a human to death. This was to be done as soon as possible, before it could produce any honey—which, on account of the “murder”, would be “demoniacally tainted” and unfit for Christian consumption.
2. Slugs
For devastating crops in 1487, the slugs of Autun were “generously forewarned” by three days of public processions—during which they were ordered to leave “under penalty of being accursed.” As crazy as it sounds, the same thing happened the following year at Beaujeu; slugs were warned three times that if they didn’t get out of the province, they would be excommunicated. Whether slugs even considered themselves members of the Church was irrelevant. Excommunication served an important legal purpose for ecclesiastical courts: it made an animal free game to kill.
Even snails were prosecuted, in 1487, 1500, 1543, and 1596—all in France. But it’s unknown how they were punished.
1. Pigs
Pigs were among the most commonly prosecuted animals. One reason for this was the way they roamed around the towns unattended, munching on whatever they found—including consecrated wafers and children. There are numerous examples of the latter, for which the pigs were usually hanged. In 1567, for example, “a sow with a black snout” was hanged from a tree for devouring a four-month-old child’s head, left hand, and upper chest. In another case, the plaintiff made a special point of the fact that a pig killed and ate a child “although it was Friday”, which, because it violated the Catholics’ proscription of meat, was a seriously aggravating factor.
Sometimes the punishment was “an eye for an eye”. In 1386, a pig that tore the face and arms off a child was sentenced to hang after being “mangled and maimed in the head and forelegs”. It was even dressed as a man for the occasion. Another particularly grisly punishment for pigs was getting buried alive. More popular, however, was burning them alive—although in this some judges were merciful, ordering they only be “slightly singed” before strangling them to death and throwing their corpses on the fire.
Like dogs, cows, and other animals, pigs were often jailed before they were executed, sometimes for weeks on end and in the same jails as humans.