On the opinion of K., the medieval trials against animals reflected a peculiarity of the medieval jurisprudence. They manifested some bright characteristics of the medieval mentality – both scholastic and mystic at once. According to K., a possibility of organizing an investigation and a trial against animals on the base of the existing civic law could be explained with the fact, that animals were treated as equal creatures made by God, and, consequently, they were able to take responsibility for their actions. The author found some features of pantheism in that phenomenon.
The main trials analyzed in the book were dated to the thirteenth-seventeenth centuries. The author stresses that there had been similar trials earlier but he knew no obvious testimonies. At that, K. notes a difference of legal actions to home animals and to wild ones (the second group included moles, locusts, etc.). The legal actions to the second group were civic, but not criminal ones. The author cites various explanations of those trials. On one point of view, they could be traced back to the Old Testament practices; on another one, they were under the influence of the barbarous law based on some local mythology. He also gives a position of investigators who explained such trials with political and legal motives and with educational goals. In the end of the book, the author provides examples of contemporary hangovers of such trials against animals.