June
09
/ 2022
One surprising quirk about life in medieval times is that people could, and did, take animals and insects to court and try them as if they were humans. While there is scant verifiable evidence on the matter, Edmund P. Evans published an entire book devoted to animal trials entitled The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals in 1906. In it he recounts about 200 stories of donkeys, pigs and roosters, often dressed as humans, being part of somber legal proceedings. While you may think it’s a joke, there is even an account of a trial of weevils. While cases against identifiable larger animals were usually tried in secular courts, cases against smaller creatures, such as weevils, rats or locusts
