000 01545nam a22002297a 4500
003 ZW-GwMSU
005 20240229131331.0
008 240229b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
040 _aMSU
_bEnglish
_cMSU
_erda
050 _aHB73 JOU
100 1 _aLeeson, Peter T.
_eauthor
245 1 0 _aVermin trials
_cby Peter T. Leeson
264 _aChicago :
_bUniversity of Chicago Press;
_c2013.
336 _2rdacontent
_atext
_btxt
337 _2rdamedia
_aunmediated
_bn
338 _2rdacarrier
_avolume
_bnc
440 _aThe Journal of Law and Economics
_vVolume56 , number 3
520 _aFor 250 years insects and rodents accused of committing property crimes were tried as legal persons in French, Italian, and Swiss ecclesiastic courts under the same laws and according to the same procedures used to try actual persons. I argue that the Catholic Church used vermin trials to increase tithe revenues where tithe evasion threatened to erode them. Vermin trials achieved this by bolstering citizens’ belief in the validity of Church punishments for tithe evasion: estrangement from God through sin, excommunication, and anathema. Vermin trials permitted ecclesiastics to evidence their supernatural sanctions’ legitimacy by producing outcomes that supported those sanctions’ validity. These outcomes strengthened citizens’ belief that the Church’s imprecations were real, which allowed ecclesiastics to reclaim jeopardized tithe revenue.
650 _aInsects
_xRodents
856 _uhttps://doi.org/10.1086/671480
942 _2lcc
_cJA
999 _c163940
_d163940