The medieval period often gets a bad reputation in the court of public opinion, weather it be on hygiene, art, science, food or the society as a whole, we love to make fun of this period in European history. But most often than not, this point of view is unwarranted and often based on fabrications, anachronisms, exaggerations and even hypocritical criticism. An example of this phenomenon is the way people see animal trials where a farm animal would be tried and executed for killing humans. People sneer and laugh to their hearts content as did 19th and 20th century sources as well as 21st century articles. But is this infamy truly justified?
According to historians, animal trials existed in western Europe from the medieval period to the 18th century but the medieval ones are the most talked about. As is customary. And in this era, according to the information presented by The criminal persecution and capital punishment of animals written in 1906, the book most commonly cited in journalist's articles, animal trials can be split into two categories: the ones leading to excommunication and the ones leading to capital punishment.
The trials leading to excommunications were fueled by religious reasoning and beliefs. The kind of thought process and belief system still present in Christianity and other extant religions but which don't affect politics and society since the separation of church and state.
What I will be focusing on are cases falling into the latter bracket as they are more relevant to our 21st century societies. My goal is to offer an alternative way of seeing the treatment of man-killing animals by medieval Europeans (mostly the French) by offering an accurate explanation of the facts based solely on the primary sources and my knowledge of late medieval society.
I will also draw comparisons between this phenomenon and modern day approaches to dealing with dangerous animals. This aspect has been overlooked by previous authors and articles that criticized secular medieval animal trials, particularly sources from the 19th and early 20th centuries, as I will demonstrate later in my writing.
I - The facts hidden within the medieval primary sources used by Edward Payson Evans
When discussing history, it is crucial to begin by presenting the facts and primary sources. I will sequentially present the information documented in four contemporary records from the late medieval era before listing the important facts that we can learn from each source:
The first document is a receipt written in 1387 on behalf of a hangman who received a payment for his services in the execution of a pig in Falaise as well as a payment for a glove he used during the execution. It stands as the only source for this event and it doesn't mention how the trial played out or what the pig was wearing and it certainly doesn't say that the pig had been killed by any means other than hanging. This will be important for the second part of my article.
The second document is a letter from the court of the duke of Burgundy pardoning the swine of a prior who were sentenced to death by the mayor of Saint-Marcel-les-Jussey, a town in the Dutchy of Burgundy. The town had a communal swineherd who's son was attacked by three sows who attacked him before the herd of swine belonging to the prior joined in. All of the pigs were found guilty (The three sows belonging to the town and the swine belonging to the prior). He then asked The duke of burgundy for a pardon. We learn from this document that:
The prior was the judge of the town but since he was on trial the mayor took his place.
The prior was seen as responsible for the behavior of his pigs but instead of charging him with negligence (which was in fact a crime back then) he chose to punish the pigs.
The prior was so opposed to the idea of losing all his swine that he pleaded to the Duke himself. Such a reaction would be understandable as livestock was worth even more to a medieval person than a person today. If his pigs were killed it would have been a financial loss.
The pigs ganged up on someone in numbers.
The third document is a record written by a notary documenting the trial of a sow and her six piglets belonging to Jehan Bailly in the lordship of Savigny-lès-Beaume after it killed the five year old son of Jehan Martin in broad daylight. The trial was held by the a knight banneret as the judge while the plaintiff was the prosecutor of the lady who owned the lordship. The sow was sentenced to death but there wasn't enough proof to understand whether the bloodied piglets also ate the five year old so their owner was asked to keep them waiting to see whether they were guilty or not (a bail) but he refused so they were in the custody of the Lady. We learn from this document that:
The plaintiff was the lady of the jurisdiction and not the father of the five year old,
The trial (not the killing) had many witnesses. So much so that the notary only mentioned a few of them,
There is no mention of torture,
The defendant was Jehan Bailly not the pig,
The only mentioned and suggested processes were testimonies of witnesses and the inquiry of Jehan bailly who refused to defend his pigs (he said he had nothing to say)
The court offered to pay Jehan bailly for the food it would cost him to keep his piglets in bail. Long as they weren't deemed innocent he couldn't do anything with them.
The sow was hung by her hind legs but it's unclear weather they killed her on the spot or left her to die. It was done on a tree since the Lady's gallows weren't built yet.
The notary was asked multiple times to write records of the trial each time something new happened. The people asking for said records were the Lady's prosecutor, the judge and the lady herself.
The last case happened in 1499 in the territory of the abbey of Josaphat near Chartres. Jehan Deladande and his wife were charged for negligence and their pig of murder of a one and a half year old girl who was either cared for by her mother or given to the couple to be taken care of by them. The couple was fined for negligence and the pig sentenced to death.
Edward Payson Evans (the author of the book) claims the couple were nursing the child but a different interpretation suggests the child was in the guardianship of her mother. This uncertainty of mine is created by the phrase "laquelle enfant avoit ete baillee a nourrice par sa mere :". The word bailler means "to give" in modern French but according to the DMF, it used to mean "to keep" or "to guard". The DMF isn't an end all be all and I am not knowledgeable enough to make any assertions on the evolution of the meaning of this word, so I will consider both possibilities which hold two very different implications.
Regardless, we learn from this document that:
The owners of the pig were charged with neglect but the subject of the neglect is uncertain (whether it's the child or the pig),
There was no torture mentioned,
The sentence was based on the confession of the couple and the context of the death,
Neglect warranted a fine. Not torture or a death sentence,
Pig was hanged.
II - The Arguments and their counter arguments
Now that I have summarized each document, I will assess the potential and/or common arguments used by people mocking pig trials and deduce their validity based on the aforementioned information.
A. The killing of the pig after it killed someone
If the fact that medieval people would kill the pig following the murder of a person from said pig is seen as silly, then so should the fact that we sometimes euthanize dogs after they maul or maim someone today (French source). People back then were as exposed to pigs in their day to day lives as we are to dogs today(at least). Moreover, pigs and their sows are known for becoming aggressive under distress. So much so that sows can be tempted to eat their piglets when under stress. Knowing the likelihood of the same sow to repeat that cannibalism, farmers choose to kill it before it can do more damage. It stands to reason that if a pig attacks a human unprovoked and kills them, the same pig will strike again when it gets the chance. It is simply beneficial to take it out instead of risking an other accident (It could get as bad as them ganging up on their owners while within their pen as has happened in one of the aforementioned cases). Even if that might not have been the primary motivation.
Besides, it's not like the animals were the only ones blamed in these cases, people were recognized to having been neglectful and would sometimes receive direct punishment for it like the couple fined in 1499. Which leads me to my next point:
B. The necessity of a trial
Whenever a pig was killed, that decision was taken by a judge after a trial. The spectacle seems unnecessary to people today requiring a firm following of local customs (traditional laws), the presence of witnesses to the trial hearings/sentencing and rigorous record keeping. We like to revile it as an attempt by medieval higher ups to boast their power before the masses. However, if we stop for a second, take a step back, consider the socioeconomic context of the time and use our critical thinking skills, something becomes clear. These pigs belonged to someone. Private property which households relied on to pay for their roofs or as personal livestock to eat. If a peasant was allowed to immediately and freely enact vengeance against a pig who killed his 5 year old, the owner of said pig will be disgruntled by the fact that someone chose to destroy his private property on grounds of an unproven accusation and will demand reparations. A trial was their way of preventing these disagreements. By having a formal agreement by a judge and jury that one's pig has killed someone, the owner of said pig won't feel crossed by the destruction of his property. And an adequate punishment can be chosen direct (fine) or indirect (the execution of the animal). What allows me to make this assertion are twofold : The recurrent mentions of the owner's neglect across most of the accounts in addition to the negative reaction of the prior when he learned all his swine were meant to be killed. He acted the way you'd expect from someone who received a harsh punishment. Have I mentioned that the pigs themselves weren't really put on trial, they were the subjects of the trial but the ones on trial really defending themselves were the owners. In fact, the presence of the pigs during the hearings isn't attested by these four documents at all.
The worst part is that this reasoning isn't just applicable back then. Even today we take measures to make sure the killing of a man-killer is warranted. The difference is that instead of having a judge and a jury decide whether or not a homicidal dog should be put down based on whether or not it killed someone, a judge has experts make that decision by determining whether the animal is likely to strike again or not.
Yes, the medieval way of doing it isn't as ethical (See argument C to understand how they weren't as cruel as some authors claimed). But how much should we expect from 500+ year old societies? This hypothesis offers a better explanation for why the judicial system took these cases as seriously as regular trials compared to other works which try too hard to create a psychological explanation instead of considering the possibility that medieval judges simply could be held accountable and had to abide by laws when conducting trials of any kind.
C. The anthropomorphizing of the pigs
Authors, journalists and historians alike have claimed that medieval animal trials and executions functioned following the assumption and belief that pigs were capable of logic and defending themselves. They also have claimed that the pigs were even dressed up like humans. Both of these are false. Created by oversights and complete fabrications.
In reality, the judicial system understood that animals weren't capable of defending themselves. we know this because the way the judges and jury decided the guiltiness of the pig: It was done through the questioning of witnesses and the defendants. In none of the medieval primary sources analyzed in The criminal prosecution and capital punishment of animals does it say the judges and lawyers spoke to the pig nor that they were asked questions yet articles and laymen like to pretend they did. Furthermore, The idea that the pigs would have been dressed as if they were humans is completely untrue. Born from a retelling of the 1387 case in Falaise from an early 19th century historian called Pierre-Gilles Langevin who clearly crammed fabricated facts within this sentence:
Subit, avant d’être pendue, la peine du talion. On lui coupa le grouin, à place duquel on appliqua un masque de figure humaine ; elle fut habillée d’une veste, d’un haut-de-chausses, de chausses aux jambes de derrière, de gants blancs aux jambes de devant ; puis, elle fut pendue suivant la sentence portée, “à cause de la détestation du crime.
The part reading "la detestation du crime" comes from an unrelated case where a bull had been sentenced to death for killing someone in the late 15th century. The author literally grafted a sentence from a different court record to create a narrative.
This quote mentions the clothes as well as cruel acts inflicted on the pig while preparing it for the execution but there simply is no mention of this in the receipt. I'm not the one who unveiled this blatant lie, it was this text written by Andrien Dubois a 21st century historian. Clearly we are dealing with a misconception spread by modern day media who can't help but use outdated secondary sources.
In conclusion, while the inability of medieval rural villages and towns to prevent pig attacks is criticizable, the reaction medieval law had towards such incidents is far from absurd and makes sense once we consider the socio-economics of the time. Also, contrarily to what some authors have put forward, these records show examples of genuine socio-political organization in the medieval court systems as they prove that even cases as relatively small as pig trials were subject to a degree of accountability as we can see from the record keeping of judges and notaries as well as the frequent mentions of good practice/customs. In fact, Medieval feudal lords and urban judges weren't free to rule as they pleased; they had rules they themselves had to follow in order to not abuse their power towards peoples who had a bit more rights than we may think.
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