The culprits were even hanged like people, in public executions!
For any representative of the animal kingdom, the medieval man had reasonable suspicions that he had committed a transgression, he reserved for him quick but fair trials and executions, of course, like any other human being.
Where the absurd?
Rodent infections were also a common problem in medieval Europe, and the civilized manners of the time required offenders to be paid with the same currency, even if they did not have human reason or intelligence.
Any animal that harmed a human being would then be mutilated or executed, not of course before apologizing with the help of its human advocate, as everyone had the same responsibility but also rights before the law.
This is what historian Edward P. Evans tells us in relevant work from 1906, narrating that even the mice "received a friendly letter in order to persuade them to leave the house in which their presence was deemed undesirable"!
In fact, the incident of 1457 with the seven pigs of the French Savigny has reached our days. The pigs therefore went through a trial for the murder of a five-year-old boy and had legal representation and every other right. They even recognized the presumption of their innocence, which, after all, acquitted the six of them and only the seventh, for which there were eyewitnesses who saw him kill the little boy, went to the gallows.
Academics and historians studying the Middle Ages have cited a large number of animal judgments as well as speculations as to why man was in such trouble. Basically, they tell us, it was the prejudices and superstitions of medieval man, but also the belief that man was the crown of nature, and he had to respect all the creatures of God in order not to draw his month.
Even the animals that strayed from this strict natural hierarchy and harmed man, where normally they should not, that is, they had to be handled in a formal and just way by human societies, showing their superiority over the horse kingdom of animals.
Other historians tell us that in the Middle Ages the world treated animals in a much more sensitive way than we do today, considering more of God's creatures than objects in their will. People were also in more direct contact with the animals they owned, as they even spent 16 hours a day next to livestock even as late as the 19th century.
Only with the industrialization of societies did the animals turn from companions to toil into a source of wealth, something that drastically changed their fate. Until then, it seemed reasonable for animal offenders to go through trials, just like people who committed crimes;