Tales of the Bizarre: The Trials & Persecution of Animals

Happy Rainy Caturday! 

Here on the Gulf Coast we're having some bad weather from hurricane Barry.  Luckily, as of right now, where D and I are located is not in the direct path; but we're still getting a lot of water dumped on us and have to deal with some semi-heavy winds.  For any of our Missy Show fans directly in the path of Barry, please be safe, and we send you prayers and good energy.

Okay, with that out of the way, let's talk about the weird era in time where animals (and insects) were actually put on trial in (Ecclesiastical) courts like people.  After reading up on this, I am both amazed and outraged by the utter ignorance of people during these times.  How on Earth could one assume an animal had enough intellectual understanding to be put on trial for some alleged wrong doing?  And even more stupid was the idea that insects such as weevils, could know right from wrong and even potentially be excommunicated?  Some of these poor animals were even cruelly executed for "crimes" they had no understanding of even having committed.  Just evil.  Just stupid.  Just dumb. 

But here we go...

Today's info on Animal Trials is courtesy of the article, "Fantastically Wrong:  Europe's Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them" by Matt Simon, 2014.


https://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-europes-insane-history-putting-animals-trial-executing/

Fantastically Wrong:  Europe's Insane History of Putting Animals on Trial and Executing Them

ON SEPTEMBER 5, 1379, two herds of pigs at a French monastery grew agitated and killed a man named Perrinot Muet. As was custom at the time, the pigs—the actual murderers and those that had simply looked on—were tried for their horrible crime, and sentenced to death. You see, with their “cries and aggressive actions,” the onlookers “showed that they approved of the assault,” and mustn’t be allowed to escape justice.

But the monastery’s prior, Friar Humbert de Poutiers, couldn’t bear to suffer the economic loss of all those pigs. So he wrote to the Duke of Burgundy, pleading for him to pardon the onlookers (the friar would allow the three murderers to suffer their fate—he was no scofflaw, after all). The duke “lent a gracious ear to his supplication and ordered that the punishment should be remitted and the swine released.” Records don’t show just how the three pigs were executed, though it was common for offending animals to be hanged or burned alive for their crimes.

Such is Europe’s shameful and largely forgotten history of putting animal "criminals" on trial and either executing them or, for plagues of insects, ordering them to leave town not only by a certain day, but by an exact time. Such irrational barbarism is hard to fathom, but as early as 824 all the way up to the middle of the 18th century, animals were held to the same moral standards as humans, suffering the same capital punishments and even rotting in the same jails.

Beasts Under Burden

Europe’s worst serial offenders, it seems, were pigs. According to E. P. Evans, in his sprawling history, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animalsfrom 1906, “The frequency with which pigs were brought to trial and adjudged to death, was owing, in a great measure, to the freedom with which they were permitted to run about the streets and to their immense number.” Evans catalogs incident after incident in which pigs chewed off ears and noses and even killed children, one swine going so far as to eat a child “although it was Friday,” a serious violation of church decree that “was urged by the prosecuting attorney and accepted by the court as a serious aggravation of the porker’s offense.” Another more mild-mannered (though no less impious) pig was hanged in France in 1394 “for having sacrilegiously eaten a consecrated wafer.”

Pretty much the entirety of the animal kingdom, though, was subject to the human rule of law. In the appendix of his book, Evans lists some 200 cases of animal executions, and these are just the ones whose records have survived Europe’s tumultuous history. There were executions of bulls, horses, eels, dogs, sheep, and, perhaps most curiously, dolphins—which he gives no information on other than they were tried and executed in Marseilles in 1596.

Capital punishment often went way beyond the brutality of hanging. Even the innocent faced our wrath of judgment: When a Swiss town was gifted a moose by the great naturalist Leonhard Thurneysser in the late 1500s, townspeople “looked upon the strange animal as a most dangerous demon, and a pious old woman finally rid the town of the dreaded beast by feeding it with an apple stuck full of broken needles.” And creatures that were themselves victims, especially of bestiality, would be horrifically executed along with their offending human. In one case “a mule condemned to be burned alive together with a man guilty of buggery” was inclined to kick, so the executioner cut off its feet before setting it aflame.

On the flip side, though, Europeans were capable of compassion toward the beasts they very much relied upon for sustenance and labor. For instance, in one bestiality case in 1750, the victim, a donkey, was acquitted “on the ground that she was the victim of violence,” while a convent’s prior signed a certificate noting that he’d known her for four years and that “she had always shown herself to be virtuous and well-behaved both at home and abroad.” Given the circumstances, it’s a somewhat touching moment in the history of animal welfare.

I think you guys get the gist of how utterly insane this all was.  I think this is the perfect example of how dangerous blind ignorance can be.  In some ways you can say it's funny just how backwards these people were for even putting an animal on trial in the first place, (and it was comical in the instances where the animals or insects were "acquitted"); but the animal lover in me finds it evil, disgusting, and cruel when these animals actually ended up being put to death over things they weren't at fault for and didn't even understand.

There's actually more to the article.  I didn't even go into the boll-weevil trial, (now that's ignorance at its finest).  To read more about that, be sure to check out the rest of the article at the link listed at the beginning of the post.

Well, that's it for now Missians!  

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your weekend and are able to safely ride out the storm, (for those of you this applies to).  

Until Monday...

This is your host, J.

signing off...