The pig that was not convicted of homicide, or: The first animal trial that was none

Authors

• Colin Frank Doctoral Student at Freie Universität Berlin; Research Assistant at "Luther Rechtsanwaltsgesellschft" (law firm)

Abstract

The case of a pig burned near Paris in 1266/1268 is widely believed to be the first instance of an animal trial in Medieval France. The paper investigates whether this assesment can stand against the background of a close examination of the primary sources. It comes to the conclusion that the sources do not support the traditional view of the incident and that further canonical examples of animal trials should be put under scrutiny.