Vermin Trials
研究了250年间法国、意大利和瑞士教会法庭对害虫进行审判的现象，认为这是教会为增加什一税收入而采取的策略，通过展示超自然惩罚的有效性来强化民众对教会制裁的信仰。
For 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.