Animali, colpa e castigo : Prodromo per nuove ricerche sull’area italiana

For a long stretch of Western history, animals and inanimate objects have been the object of judgement when they have been found to cause harm to people or communities. The phenomenon experienced its greatest intensity between the 14th and 17th centuries. 19th century scholars distinguished between criminal and civil trials (the last discussed in an ecclesiastical court, however), depending on whether they were set up against individual animals, usually domestic animals, who had committed a crime against people, or against herds, flocks, swarms of wild animals that had caused damage to crops and other human activities, or to public and private property, or who were found guilty of the transmission of epidemics, epizootics, epiphytes. This is a legal and social phenomenon that has been widely studied outside Italy. On the other hand, there is no intervention on the specifically Italian context. The contribution moves from this consideration and proceeds by indicating differences between the Italian context and the rest of medieval Europe.