Text Box: Further proof of the law’s claim to omnipotence can be found in an even more obscure nook of the continental legal system, for the authority that Europe’s courts asserted did not stop with the animal kingdom. It reached beyond the grave. Defunct defendants, from ex-heretics and traitors to sodomites and suicides, would, until the early nineteenth century, be subjected to procedures that barely acknowledged their indifference to the outcome. Someone who died awaiting trial in fifteenth-century Nuremberg, for example, would be carried before the judges, in manacles, and invited to appoint an advocate. As and when  the body failed to do so, the judges would examine it, formally surmise that it was dead, and appoint a lawyer on its behalf. The corpse’s counsel would then demand their assistance, on the basis that his client was not in full possession of its faculties, before attempting to establish its innocence. If he succeeded, all well and good. If he failed, the prisoner would be sentenced, dragged, and executed as though death were just a dream. Text Box: In around 1510, peasants from the diocese of Autun petitioned its episcopal court to hear their complaint that rats were destroying their barley crop. Trumpets and proclamations were sounded at several crossroads to notify the rodents of their duty to attend, and when they failed to appear, the prosecutor moved for judgment. The bishop, aware that they stood on the brink of “total destruction and extermination,” thought it necessary, however, to give them a lawyer, and he appointed one Bartholomew Chassenée The young advocate, who was destined to end his career as one of the most distinguished jurists in France, would fight their corner with a tenacity that could put several modern public defenders to shame. His clients’ disobedience was compounded by their bad reputation, which constituted powerful evidence of guilt under canonical law, but Chassenée immediately seized the initiative with a ferocious counterattack. The plaintiffs’ action, he pointed out, did not just touch the health or ruin of a handful of rats. Every single rodent in Autun was imperiled – and every single one was therefore entitled to make representations. They were, however, spread so far and wide that the summons that had been issued could not possibly have notified them all. The fact that it did not appear to have notified any was a point he ignored, but it evidently caused the court equally little concern. For Chassenée had saved the day. The bench ruled that the summons had been defective and remitted the case for re-hearing, ordering that the rats now be warned to attend by way of sermons preached from every pulpit in Autun.              The priests of the diocese obediently promulgated the summons, and the time eventually came for the court to reconvene. Lawyers, clerics, and peasants gathered in the courtroom to await the rats’ arrival. History does not record how long it was before they stopped waiting. The record shows, however, that not a single rodent turned up. A lesser lawyer might have yielded gracefully, but Chassenée was made of stern stuff. After acknowledging that his clients had ignored the summons, he claimed that they had been given too little time. He went further.  It was an ancient principle of customary law that no defendant was required to risk life or limb to come to court, and Chassenée argued that his clients therefore had a cast-iron excuse. They were rats—and on every highway and byway, there were cats. No court purporting to observe natural law could reasonably condemn a rat for fearing a cat. Ergo, their absence was justified. Autun’s judges seem to have been impressed with the logic. So much so, indeed, that they adjourned the case. Chassenée had won yet another reprieve . . . . The Hanged Man (Tarot)

The trials of corpses

and animals