{"id":1899,"date":"2019-01-24T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-24T10:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/?p=1899"},"modified":"2020-04-29T14:20:36","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T14:20:36","slug":"the-criminal-prosecution-and-capital-punishment-of-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/2019\/01\/24\/the-criminal-prosecution-and-capital-punishment-of-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals – January 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals by E.P. Evans, 1906 (Clarke Miscellaneous 180)<\/p><\/div>\n

From the Middle Ages until the mid-eighteenth century a wide array of animals were brought to trial in Europe, charged with a range of crimes committed against both humans and other animals. E.P. Evans\u2019 book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals <\/em><\/a>documents nearly 200 cases of animal trials from this period.<\/p>\n

The frontispiece of Evans\u2019 book shows a sow dressed in a jacket and trousers being executed in a public square. The pig had been charged with the murder of a small child and, following its execution, it was dressed up in human clothes to be displayed in the town.<\/p>\n

Not all cases ended in capital punishment, however. Evans also documents cases where ecclesiastical trials of insects and vermin resulted in excommunication. For example, he writes about a case of rats who were defended by Bartholemew Chassen\u00e9e \u2013 a renowned sixteenth century lawyer. The rats were accused of having \u2018feloniously eaten up and wantonly destroying the barley-crop\u2019 and Chassen\u00e9e successfully defended the rats, who were unable to appear before the court due to the \u2018length and difficulty of the journey and the serious perils which attended it\u2019 \u2013 the \u2018serious perils\u2019 being the \u2018vigilance of their mortal enemies, the cats\u2019.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just animals who were subject to human law, however. Evans also writes of cases where inanimate objects were brought before the court. In one instance, a statue of a famous athlete, Nik\u00f4n of Thasos, had fallen and crushed a man. The statue was subsequently brought before a tribunal and sentenced to be \u2018cast into the sea\u2019.<\/p>\n

While many of the cases Evans discusses may seem ridiculous to us, Medieval and early-Modern Europeans recognised that animals were capable of suffering pain and death. With contemporary movements like PETA and WWF working to establish animal rights, by granting animals agency in a court of justice, perhaps our Medieval and early-Modern predecessors were not too far wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Middle Ages until the mid-eighteenth century a wide array of animals were brought to trial in Europe, charged with a range of crimes committed against both humans and other animals. E.P. Evans\u2019 book The Criminal Prosecution and Capital … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5894,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[412,420,417,418,419,421],"class_list":["post-1899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-treasure-of-the-month","tag-animals","tag-criminal","tag-execution","tag-middle-ages","tag-prosecution","tag-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5894"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1899"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2582,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1899\/revisions\/2582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/speccoll\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}