In 1386 a crowd in Falaise, Normandy, gathered to watch a pig dressed in a tailored jacket and breeches be executed after a formal trial with a judge, witnesses and legal representation. This episode explores centuries of documented criminal proceedings against animals across Europe, from the 13th to the 18th century, and asks what these bizarre but rigorously bureaucratic trials reveal about medieval law, psychology and the human need for cosmic order.

The conversation explains the split between secular courts, which handled livestock accused of property damage or homicide, and church courts, which used exorcisms and holy water against locusts, rats and weevils. It covers the 1379 gang trial of two pig herds pardoned by the Duke of Burgundy, the fine known as the relief of a dead man for negligent owners, the 10th-century Byzantine letter threatening field mice, and the Basel rooster burned in 1474 for laying an egg. It also examines why the state spent fortunes on jail cells, lawyers and executioners rather than simply eating the pork.

• Why free-roaming pigs were the most common defendants in medieval towns
• How jurist Bartholomew Chassenee defended the rats of Autun by arguing that the plaintiffs’ cats made the journey to court too dangerous
• The three rationales for the trials: deterrence, communal entertainment, and repairing a breach in the divine hierarchy
• Critics from the Roman law Digest to Thomas Aquinas and Philippe de Remy who argued animals lack criminal intent
• How Colombia’s Constitutional Court recently cited these trials in debates over animals as subjects of law