The World Has Always Been Fucked Up

[liadnan]

"When five-year-old Jehan Martin was murdered in 1457, the culprits were quickly apprehended, imprisoned and brought to trial. The case followed the normal procedure for such a serious crime, except in one important respect: the accused were pigs. Following the customs of the Burgundian court that dealt with the matter, the pigs' owner was invited to make representations "concerning the punishment and execution of justice" against the animals. He waived this right and the prosecutor demanded the death penalty. The judgment that followed was unusually tricky, since one of the animals appeared to be more culpable than the others. The child was killed by a sow in the presence of her six piglets. These were stained with blood at the scene of the crime but there was "no positive proof that they had assisted in mangling the deceased". After consulting with local experts[*] the judge ruled that the sow should be executed. A hangman was brought from a neighbouring town to hang the beast by its hind legs from an oak tree. The verdict on the piglets was less severe. They could return to their owner if he was prepared to vouch for their future behaviour and present them in court "should further evidence be forthcoming to prove their complicity in their mother's crime". The owner refused these terms and the pigs were forfeited to a local noblewoman. It appears that their subsequent conduct was blameless and no further punishments were needed."

Darren Oldridge, Strange Histories: the trial of the pig, the walking dead, and other matters of fact from the medieval and Renaissance worlds chap. 3 citing E.P Evans, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906 repr 1987) and E. Cohen, "Law, Folklore, and Animal Lore", Past and Present 110 (1986)

[*] This was a recognised area of expertise?

Comments

[rparvaaz.livejournal.com]

This was a recognised area of expertise?

I guess it was more a matter of just accepting the word of the self-proclaimed experts....there usually are a few of these in every village and their area extends to every topic under the sun.

[liadnan]

Yes, now you come to mention it that seems familiar.

[etherealfionna.livejournal.com]

I think I've heard of this case before.

And is it Rats & Gargoyles that opens with a pig being hanged for murder? One of Mary Gentle's White Crow stories does, anyway.

[liadnan]

I was vaguely aware of the story actually, but hadn't read it in detail. Now I'm at home to check, it is R&G, yes "In the cathedral square, the crowd were hanging a pig."

[(Anonymous)]

That book [E.P Evans, The Criminal Prosection and Capital Punishment of Animals (1906 repr 1987)] surely mentions the rats of Autun:

http://static.highbeam.com/u/universityofpennsylvanialawreview/june011995/whatwasitliketotryaratcomparativejurisprudencepart/

Don't quite know about the trial subscription in the above link, I've got this (somewhat esoteric) article on paper.

[liadnan]

In fact, that's what it opens with (now I have a chance to dive into the stacks of the inn library): "It is said that Bartholemew Chassen&eacu;e, a distinguished French jurist of the sixteenth century, made his reputation at the bar as counsel for some rats, which had been put on trial before the ecclesiastical court of Autun on the charge of having feloniously eaten up and wantonly destroyed the barley-crop of that province.... In view of the bad repute and notorious guilt of his clients [he] was forced to employ all sorts of legal shifts and chicane, dilatory pleas and other technical objections, hoping thereby to find some loophole in the meshes of the law through which the accused might escape, or at least to defer and mitigate the sentence of the judge.
[...]
[He showed that] if a person be cited to appear at some place, to which he cannot come with safety, he may exercise the right of appeal and refuse to obey the writ, even thouh such appeal be expressly precluded in the summons. The point was argued as seriously as though it were a question of family feud between Capulet and Montague in Verona or Colonna and Orsini in Rome.

Bloody overriding objective has taken all the fun out of things.