History of Animal Trials, by Edward Payson Evans, was written in 1906 and explores one of the strangest chapters in the history of justice: the trials of animals accused of crimes such as murder, heresy, or destruction of crops. The author compiles documented cases from the 13th to 18th centuries in Europe, where pigs, horses, rats, insects, and even caterpillars were arrested, tried, defended by lawyers, and sometimes sentenced to hanging or banishment. Through these stories, Evans shows how the legal and religious thinking of the time projected human categories--guilt, sin, responsibility--onto animals, revealing at the same time the symbolic, magical, and theological mentality of those societies. The book is both a repertoire of extravagant anecdotes and a reflection on the evolution of justice and the human view of animals.
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