Can you imagine a pig, a cow or a wild animal being put on trial? And I am not talking about a pantomime, but about a trial with all the procedural guarantees, even with his defense attorney, logically ex officio. Yes, until practically the 19th century it was common practice to accuse an animal of any crime and put it on trial. The set of rules, in theory inspired by ideas of justice and order, that regulate human relations in every society have varied throughout history, and if now no one would fit in the head to judge an animal, there were times and places where the fundamental thing was to punish the guilty, whoever he was, and no matter how irrational the bug was, he had to be tried, convicted and, if necessary, excommunicated and executed. To make matters worse, the people welcomed this type of absurd and histrionic trials.
As I have told you, all procedural guarantees had to be met, so the accused had to be summoned and transferred to court, where a defense attorney was assigned to him who swore to carry out his duties "with zeal and propriety", and, therefore, could use all kinds of legal procedures and resources:dismissals, extensions, vices of nullity... And there were some lawyers who did it brilliantly, such as the young French lawyer of the fourteenth century, Bartolomeo Chassané in his masterful defense of the rats of the diocese of Autun (France).
A plague of rats was devastating the region doing their thing, and given the impossibility of controlling them, someone had the idea of denouncing them before the local ecclesiastical court. Logically, they were summoned to appear in court, and they did so by hanging a summons on the door of the local church. As the rats did not appear, the prosecution demanded an immediate sentence from the court, but Chassané argued that they were so numerous that the summons had a formal defect. The court upheld his protest, and the priests of each parish were ordered to go through the town and fields and read the summons aloud. Still, they didn't show up. And the prosecutor added the crime of contempt, in addition to requesting a sentence again. But Chassané was not going to let his clients down, he pulled another ace up his sleeve and this time he argued that many were too old and others too young to make a trip to the courthouse; and the rest of his clients, although they were willing to attend, were afraid to get out of their holes “by the evil cats of the whistleblowers ”. So, the lawyer demanded that the authorities assume the protection so that his clients could attend, which would have meant a brutal expense and, in addition, by having the local authorities assume custody, they were exposed to having to face large compensation if any of his clients suffered any damage. Chassané managed to bring the process to a point of no return and the trial was postponed sine die… and to date. So, we can say that he won the defense.
This case served the young lawyer to start a brilliant career that led him to be president of the parliament of Provence. Later, facing strong social opposition, he defended a group of heretics with the fine argument that “if even the rats of Autun have had a fair trial, why deny someone a heretic? ”. But here it didn't help him win, and what he did win were many enemies for defending heretics. A short time later, he received a bouquet of flowers scented with a powerful poison and fell dead as soon as he smelled them.