Renard and Animal Trials

After our discussion last class of the moral and legal culpability of animals, I thought I would look back to The Trial of Renard.  I found two passages there that I think could shed light on the relationship between justice and guilt with respect to medieval animal trials.  Of course, it’s important to note that Renard’s trial is conducted by anthropomorphized animals against an anthropomorphized animals, and is not directly comparable to the trials of pigs, rats, locusts, etc. held by real, institutional human courts.  Nonetheless, some issues raised in Renard’s trial are relevant to the real-life prosecution of non-human animals.

            The first passage is spoken by Pinte the hen, upon her arrival in court with the body of her sister, who has been killed by Renard.  After explain the circumstances of her sister’s death, she bemoans,

                        “But no force

Can bring justice to one who grins

At threats, and doesn’t care two pins

For anyone’s wrath.” (Trial of Renard, 102)

Can justice be done against someone (or something) who has no fear of punishment or respect for authority?  Renard certainly understands the horrible things he’s doing, he just doesn’t care.  Pinte’s remarks suggest that for her, force is not enough, that justice requires some notion of repentance or guilt on the part of the perpetrator.  This is a much more common-sense principle when it comes to human criminals, but it may also have been applied to offending animals.  Joy Enders cites a claim from Arthur Magnin that accused pigs would sometimes be tortured on the rack, and “the cries which [the animals] uttered under torture were received as confessions of guilt” (Enders).  Peter Dinzelbacher cites another example, a trial in Leiden, in which a dog who had bitten a child “confessed without torture” and was executed. 

            What does it mean for an animal to confess?  Is true understanding of the crime necessary for a confession to be valid?  In the case of the pigs, it seems certain that their squeals indicate intense pain rather than any understanding that they’ve committed a crime, let alone a valid admission of guilt.  It’s easier to understand a dog looking “guilty,” but there’s still the question of whether they’re able to link their punishment or scolding to a particular act of theirs.  In absence of this understanding, can the execution of the offending animal be considered justice?

The second passage is spoken by King Noble, in response to Pinte’s complaint aginst Renard:

“I feel great sympathy with you,

And wish somehow to relieve your woe.

Renard shall come if he will or no!

By what you shall see with your own eyes,

Hear with you ears, you’ll realize

How truly justice has been done.

Vengeance I’ll have on anyone

For breaking the peace and murdering!” (Trial of Renard, 104)

Here, justice is equated with vengeance.  What matters is not the state of mind of the punished, but the fact that they are punished in the appropriate degree for their deed.   Bringing comfort to the family of a victim is also a compelling reason for the trial and execution of an animal, particularly one accused of murder.  Dinzelbacher proposes that one of the reasons for animal trials might have been “comfort derived the ritual ‘magic’ of legal formalism, and public execution” (Dinzelbacher, 421).  For the animal community in the story, trying and punishing Renard would be a way to represent assert control over a dangerous individual who scorns authority.  In a similar way for the family of a child killed by a pig, the process of accusing, trying, and executing the pig might bring some sort of satisfaction.

W. A.

Bonus content:  absurd-sounding trials against non-human defendants are not yet a thing of the past http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Approximately_64,695_Pounds_of_Shark_Fins