{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"","title":"A Most Honest Creature","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/69304179d6bc23eda246da43/686565a0-ff3a-4f7c-9213-afacf381a591.jpg?height=200","description":"For roughly five hundred years, European courts tried animals as genuine defendants — pigs for homicide, roosters for laying eggs, caterpillars formally excommunicated by the Church. By 1750 the practice was fading, but it had not yet disappeared. When a man named Jacques Ferron was caught committing a crime involving a donkey in the commune of Vanvres, just outside Paris, both were brought before the court together. Ferron was convicted and executed. The donkey's case was harder: the law required the court to determine whether she had been a willing participant or an unwilling victim. The people of Vanvres — her neighbours, the prior of the local convent, the principal inhabitants of the commune — signed a formal certificate attesting that they had known her for four years and that she was, in the precise legal French of the document, 'a most honest creature.' The court accepted the evidence, acquitted her, and sent her home. Strange in two directions at once: plainly absurd on its face, and yet — within a system that routinely denied the same courtesy to accused witches and servants — a small, careful act of communal solidarity for someone who could not speak in her own defence.","author_name":"Atween Studios"}