(Animals are also an indicator of how rational some of the judicial practice of the day was. A rooster was tried, convicted, and burned at Basel in 1474 for laying eggs, the law of the state thus making up for what was defective in the law of nature. Trials of animals peaked in the sixteenth century. Pigs were probably the worst treated, possibly because of their near-human squeals.46 Combination witch-animal trials were also possible, as numbers of werewolves were discovered, mostly in Germany. It is a relief to be able to report similar legal processes against vampires, who had the good
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