History’s Verdict: The Bizarre Court Cases They Forgot to Teach You in School

History class paints the past in broad strokes, focusing on great wars, powerful dynasties, and transformative inventions. We learn about Magna Carta and the Nuremberg Trials, but the curriculum often skips the strange, perplexing, and downright bizarre legal battles that say more about a society’s mindset than any treaty. What happens when the defendant is an animal, a corpse, or a swarm of insects? For centuries, courts grappled with these very questions, holding trials that defy modern logic but offer a fascinating window into the beliefs and anxieties of our ancestors. These are not mere footnotes; they are extraordinary legal dramas that challenge our understanding of justice itself, revealing a world where the lines between law, religion, and superstition were fascinatingly blurred.

When animals faced the judge

In the modern world, if an animal causes harm, we hold its owner responsible. But for centuries, particularly in medieval Europe, the animal itself could be the defendant. These were not symbolic gestures; they were formal legal proceedings. Animals could be arrested, held in prison, provided with a court-appointed lawyer, and, if found guilty, publicly executed. These trials fell into two main categories: secular courts tried individual domestic animals (like pigs or bulls) for attacking humans, while ecclesiastical courts took on collective pests (like rats or locusts) for destroying crops.

Perhaps the most infamous example is the 1386 trial of a pig in Falaise, France. The sow was accused of goring and killing an infant. After its arrest, the pig was held in the local jail, just as a human would be. During the trial, evidence was presented, and the court found the pig guilty of murder. The sentence was carried out with chilling solemnity. The pig was first maimed in its head and leg to mirror the infant’s injuries. Then, it was dressed in a man’s waistcoat and publicly hanged at the town square. This spectacle served as a powerful warning to the community, reinforcing social order by demonstrating that even a “dumb animal” was subject to human justice.

The lawyer who defended rats

While a single pig in the dock is strange enough, imagine the challenge of serving a summons to an entire population of rats. This was the problem facing a French court in the early 16th century, and it led to one of history’s most brilliant, and bizarre, legal defenses. The villagers of Autun, France, brought a case against the local rat population for ravenously destroying their barley crops. The court agreed to hear the case and appointed a rising legal star, Bartholomew Chassenée, to act as the rats’ defense attorney.

Chassenée took his duty seriously and used procedural arguments that were both logical and absurd.

• First, he argued that the summons was invalid. It had been issued to the rats of Autun generally, but not served to each one individually. He contended that his clients were scattered across a wide territory and a single public announcement was insufficient for them all to appear. The court agreed and ordered a second summons to be read from the pulpit of every nearby parish.
• When the rats inevitably failed to appear again, Chassenée made his masterstroke argument. He claimed his clients wanted to obey the court’s order, but the journey was too perilous. He argued that the roads were filled with their mortal enemies: the village cats. To require the rats to appear in court was to send them to their certain death, a clear violation of their right to safe passage.

The court was so impressed by this line of reasoning that the case was ultimately adjourned and never concluded. Chassenée’s clever defense of the rats cemented his reputation, and he went on to become a celebrated jurist. The case stands as a surreal testament to the era’s legal formalism, where the principles of due process could be extended even to pests.

The trial of the dead pope

Of all the bizarre spectacles in legal history, few can rival the “Cadaver Synod.” This was not a trial of an animal or a pest, but of a man who had already been dead for nine months. In 897 AD, the Vatican became a courtroom for one of history’s most macabre events. The defendant was Pope Formosus, and the plaintiff was his enraged successor, Pope Stephen VI, who harbored a deep political hatred for him.

Stephen VI ordered Formosus’s corpse to be exhumed from its papal tomb. The decaying body was dressed in sacred vestments, propped up on a throne in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, and put on trial. With the corpse of Formosus silently presiding, Stephen VI paced before it, screaming accusations of perjury, ambition, and illegally assuming the papacy. A young deacon was appointed to act as a defense counsel, forced to answer on the dead pope’s behalf while trembling with fear. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. Formosus was found guilty on all counts. His papacy was declared void, all his acts and ordinations were annulled, and the three fingers he used for blessings were hacked from his right hand. His body was stripped of its papal robes, dressed in layman’s clothes, and thrown into the Tiber River.

The case of the stolen bucket

Sometimes a legal dispute is not bizarre for its defendant but for its subject matter and its catastrophic consequences. While not a formal trial in the same vein, the conflict over a simple wooden bucket plunged two Italian city-states into a war that left thousands dead. In 1325, the rival cities of Modena and Bologna in Italy were locked in the century-spanning Guelph-Ghibelline conflict. Tensions were already high when a group of Modenese soldiers staged a daring raid into the heart of Bologna and stole an oaken bucket from a public well.

For Bologna, the theft was an intolerable insult to their civic honor. They demanded its immediate return. Modena, flush with a sense of victory, refused. The dispute over this seemingly trivial object was the final spark. Bologna declared war, and the two cities met in the bloody Battle of Zappolino. Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Modenese army won a decisive victory. The case of the stolen bucket serves as a powerful historical lesson on how seemingly minor disputes can escalate when pride and long-standing rivalries are involved. The bucket was never returned. To this day, the original Secchia Rapita, or “Stolen Bucket,” is proudly displayed as a trophy in a tower in Modena, a bizarre monument to a conflict born from politics, pride, and petty theft.

From the public hanging of a pig to a dead pope propped on a throne, these strange cases offer more than just historical amusement. They are unfiltered reflections of the societies that produced them. These trials show us how our ancestors grappled with complex ideas of blame, justice, and divine will in a world where the supernatural was an everyday reality. They reveal the intricate legal formalism of the medieval mind, where the rights of rats could be debated with sincere gravity. While they were forgotten by the mainstream history curriculum, these bizarre verdicts provide a crucial, humanizing look into the past, reminding us that the path to our modern legal system was not always straight or logical. It was, at times, utterly strange.

Image by: Magda Ehlers
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