The pig couldn't understand the charge, the witnesses, the judge, or the sentence. Medieval Europe still put the animal through the formality. In 1386, a sow in Falaise, France, was condemned after killing a child.
The court simply didn't destroy a dangerous animal; it treated the pig as a criminal, ordered an execution, and turned punishment into public instruction.
I couldn't find out if pork chops, ham, and bacon were part of the post-execution menu.
The old courts had a strange confidence in procedure. Pigs, dogs, rats, grasshoppers, flies, caterpillars, and snails could be summoned, accused, defended, condemned, or cursed.
In 1386, in the old Norman city of Falaise, a “vast and motley” crowd gathered to witness the execution of a convicted murderer. Spectators donned their best velvet and feathers, the prisoner was given a new suit for the occasion, and an artist memorialized the scene in fresco. For more than 400 years (until its careless destruction in 1820 by a whitewasher), the west wall of the town church was a testament to that day’s incredible proceedings: the aforementioned criminal was a pig, which “had indulged in the evil propensity of eating infants on the street” and was sentenced to be maimed in the head and forelegs prior to hanging.
Although we often think of strange lawsuits as an American pastime, medieval Europe has the U.S. beat. For centuries, the courts of France, Italy, Switzerland, and other nearby countries tried pigs, dogs, rats, grasshoppers, and snails for crimes against people, property, and God. These animal trials were of two kinds: (1) secular suits against individual creatures who had maimed or killed humans; and (2) ecclesiastic cases against vermin like mice and locusts, who were excommunicated for their grain-related crimes. Ever since then, scholars have been trying to figure out why these bizarre proceedings happened at all: As William Ewald once wrote, “Nobody knows what they were for, and nobody has ever known.”
Most recorded trials came from parts of France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany from the late medieval period into the early modern age. The practice lasted long enough to make the past feel less quaint than stubborn.
Two systems handled the work; secular courts dealt with animals accused of harm, especially pigs that injured or killed children, while church courts took up pests that ruined crops, spread fear, or seemed to mock the order God had placed over the world.
We all know how King Canute attempted to stay the tide at Lambeth; but who has heard, for example, of the solemn threats made against the tides of locusts which threatened to engulf the countryside of France and Italy? The Pied Piper, who charmed the rats from Hamelin is a part of legend; but who has heard of Bartholomew Chassenée, a French jurist of the sixteenth century, who made his reputation at the bar as the defence counsel for some rats? The rats had been put on trial in the ecclesiastical court on the charge of having “feloniously eaten up and wantonly destroyed” the local barley. When the culprits did not in fact turn up in court on the appointed day, Chassenée made use of all his legal cunning to excuse them. They had, he urged in the first place, probably not received the summons since they moved from village to village; but even if they had received it they were probably too frightened to obey, since as everyone knew they were in danger of being set on by their mortal enemies the cats. On this point Chassenée addressed the court at some length, in order to show that if a person be cited to appear at a place to which he cannot come in safety, he may legally refuse. The judge, recognising the justice of this claim, but being unable to persuade the villagers to keep their cats indoors, was obliged to let the matter drop.
A pig might meet the hangman, and a swarm of insects might face a command to leave under threat of excommunication, which seems unlikely to have troubled the insects.
Rats in Autun, France, received one of history's oddest legal defenses. French jurist Bartholomew Chassenée argued in the early 1500s that the rats needed proper notice because they were scattered across the countryside. He also argued they couldn't safely appear in court because cats might attack them on the road.
The logic was absurd, but the courtroom treated it as law.
The pig trials were darker. In 1457, a sow in Savigny, France, was tried with six piglets after a child's death. The sow was condemned; the piglets were spared because the evidence against them was weak.
The court could see shades of guilt in a litter of pigs, which is either comic or horrifying depending on how long you stare at it.
This account reminds me of an old joke: what came first, the chicken or the egg?
Another fascinating incident involved a rooster which laid an egg. Yes, you read that correctly.
At Basle [sic], 1474, a cock was tried for having laid an egg. For the prosecution it was proved that cocks’ eggs were of inestimable value for mixing in certain magical preparations; that a sorcerer would rather possess a cock’s egg than be master of the philosopher’s stone: and that, in pagan lands, Satan employed witches to hatch such eggs, from which proceeded animals most injurious to all of the Christian faith and race. The advocate for the defence admitted the facts of the case, but asked what evil animus had been proved against his client, what injury to man or beast had it effected? Besides, the laying of the egg was an involuntary act, and as such, not punishable by law. If the crime of sorcery were imputed, the cock was innocent; for there was no instance on record of Satan ever having made a compact with one of the brute creation. (Chambers 129)
Jen Girgen, who is aforementioned addressing the historical and contemporary prosecution and punishment of animals, contends that there are in essence two types of trials: ecclesiastical and secular. In simple terms, the church was involved when animals affected food stuffs. The other characteristics of ecclesiastical trials of animals involved more spiritual or supernatural aspects like anathematization, maledictions, sorcery, and even excommunication. Secular courts were involved when the lives of people were at stake.
People didn't hold these trials because they were stupid. They lived in a world where law, religion, fear, and daily survival pressed against each other. A child killed by a wandering pig was a real tragedy, while a ruined crop could mean hunger. Courts gave grief a shape and panic a ritual. The animal in the dock became a way to say the world still had rules, even when the barnyard disagreed.
The comedy comes from the paperwork; the tragedy comes from the need behind it. Medieval men and women wanted the same thing later generations wanted: blame assigned, danger contained, and order restored after violence.
They just extended the courtroom past the human line and asked the animals to answer for instincts they could never explain.
Modern law no longer treats a pig as a murderer or a rat as a defendant, unless, of course, they're Democrats. We still recognize the impulse; when disaster strikes, people hunt for a culprit before the dust settles. The medieval courtroom gave them a snout, a tail, or a swarm to punish. The robe, the judge, and the sentence made it feel like justice.
The animals never understood a word of it, but the humans understood too much.
Oh, the joke's punchline? Neither, the rooster.
