This really isn’t a terribly interesting story, but it is something for the annals of human stupidity. I can’t remember the exact details, and I really don’t care to do an exhaustive search the Internet, but I’ll sketch it out for you as I recall having read about it some years ago.
In 1474, in Switzerland, a hen that was thought to be a cock, laid an egg. Nowadays this wouldn’t even cause concern, as it is known that certain female chickens exhibit masculine traits and even grow coxcombs. But in those days, if it looked like a cock, it was a cock, and when this intersexed chicken laid a yolkless egg, it was seen as a sign that some witch in the village was attempting to create a basilisk. A basilisk is supposedly made with a yolkless egg from a male chicken. This was of course the Devil’s work, and so the chicken was put on trial for witchcraft and the heinous crime of laying an egg.
The chicken’s attorney argued that while this may have in fact been a demonic act, it was involuntary and the chicken could no more help laying the accursed egg than any possessed person could help their actions while under the Devil’s sway.
The chicken was found guilty and burned at the stake.
The sad thing is they probably didn’t bother to baste him. Probably didn’t even eat him. What a waste.
This is the WEIRDEST and most entertaining story I’ve read all month.
The title made me rofl
It’s all true.
Okay but. The most important part of this entire story is that the chicken had legal representation. Why? Was it a legality? Was someone obligated by law to represent the chicken? or did someone just feel that strongly about its innocence?
Yes, precisely. The attorneys of the day were just beginning to work through the philosophical theories of the juxtaposition of a religious state with necessary fairness and unbiased doctrine of law. This was at a crucial point in history, a kind of nexus between the feudal and the renaissance. These types of events were somewhat commonplace.
Ideal time-travel destination: The Chicken Trial
For the defense, this was basically free practice, and if they lost the case, it wasn’t like they had lost street cred, or had to deal with the next of kin.
Indeed. It was an intellectual exercise, but it was also more than that, because it was the beginning of the notion of equal and adequate representation. Lynch mobs and backward assize courts were nothing new. Barons and lords presided over matters on a constant basis without any presumption of fair treatment or ethical judgement. No representation was given, nor guaranteed. Moments like this were the strange psychotic delusions that mandated some sort of rationality. You’ve put a chicken…a non-speaking animal, on trial. For a crime that biblical texts tell us is only possible with intent, and as the Bible indicated according to the doctrine of the time, was incapable of having such intent. So there was a moment there of absolute insanity that was reined in.
“That chicken is a witch! Put it on trial!”
“But a chicken is an animal. It can’t be a witch.”
“Well………it’s being used by a witch!”
“But how would a witch use a chicken, and how do we get an animal to testify which witch is manipulating it?”
“Well………..give it an attorney who can make that argument.”
And from there on out, the precedent was set that all people brought before the law were entitled to representation.
Now, that is not to say that became common practice, nor that all such individuals obtained even a passing assistance from their representation, but when documents, laws and documents regarding the rights of citizens began to be adopted, moments like this became pivotal.
“You mean to say you would let a chicken have an attorney, but not a man accused of petty theft? What sense does that make?”
To the point that, James I, who had himself written a book about how to find and prove a witch “forensically”, actually used common sense to show that a person was not a witch, himself acting on the witch’s behalf.
So such things were an integral part of modern western legal principles…
But my heavens were they stupid.