Medieval courts put animals on trial — with defense lawyers

From roughly the 13th to the 18th century, European courts prosecuted animals for crimes. A pig that killed a child could be arrested, jailed alongside human prisoners, formally charged, and — if convicted — publicly hanged or burned, sometimes dressed in human clothes. These weren't mob lynchings but careful judicial proceedings, complete with witnesses, judges, and court-appointed defense attorneys who argued to spare their four-legged clients. One French lawyer, Bartholomew Chassenée, made his reputation defending rats.

There were two flavors. Secular courts tried individual domestic animals — usually pigs, which roamed freely and occasionally attacked children — treating them almost exactly like human defendants. Ecclesiastical (church) courts handled plagues of pests like rats, locusts, and weevils. Since you can't jail a swarm, the church's weapon was the anathema or excommunication: a solemn curse ordering the creatures to leave the fields, sometimes granting them a deadline and a lawyer to plead their case first.

Why bother? To modern eyes it looks absurd — an animal can't understand a charge or be deterred by punishment. But that's the clue: the trials weren't about deterrence. They were about restoring a disrupted moral and cosmic order, reassuring a frightened community that the universe still ran on rules, and that even a rampaging beast was subject to law and to God.