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appeals to Jupiter produced flocks of rose-colored starlings that destroyed the locusts in Asia Minor. The early Muslims also saw locusts as the apocalyptic agents of God. Even the good Christian entomologists, Kirby and Spence, were well aware of the Islamic perspective: “So well do the Arabians know their power, that they make a locust say to Mahomet, ‘We are the army of the great God; we produced ninety-nine eggs; if the hundred were completed, we should consume the whole earth and all that is in it.’” And in 1864, when American farmers were besieged by locusts, pious Muslims in Syria exorcised and ostracized locusts by reading the Koran aloud in ravaged fields on the other side of the world.
    The Christian response to locust invasions was most thoroughly documented in Edward P. Evans’s bizarre and authoritative treatise, The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals . Amid incredible accounts of legal proceedings against unruly pets and homicidal livestock can be found the strangest of all human-animal legal conflicts that played out in the ecclesiastical courts of Europe—locusts on trial. The earliest involvement of the Church as an extermination agency appears to be in 880, when Roman authorities sought help from Pope Stephan VI. The Holy Father provided a huge volume of holy water, which was apparently used in the course of exorcising the swarm. But exorcism became viewed as a drastic intervention, so a more subtle strategy emerged.
    During the reign of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, the Church took a different tack in dealing with troublesome locusts: excommunication. This approach was applied to a swarm that settled in the northern Italian province of Mantua. In this case, as in many previous instances, the locusts dutifully dispersed not long after the Church’s proclamation. Of course, locust swarms tend to move about even when they are not the subjects of religious persecution, but this entomological pattern did nothing to diminish people’s faith in the efficacy
of religious interventions. The use of excommunication, however, raised a thorny theological issue. To be excommunicated one needs to be a communicant in the first place. That is, if an insect is not part of the Church and able to partake in communion, then it is, strictly speaking, nonsensical to excommunicate the creature, no matter how destructive it might be. The only legitimate recourse was to anathematize, or curse, the beasts. But this raised an even more troublesome religious problem.
    A locust swarm could mean one of two things. The insects might be the work of godless nature or even the devil. If plowing and planting were noble labor, even a higher calling, then the locusts could be seen as the diabolical work of Satan. In this case, calling upon the Church to deliver a searing curse might be just the thing to drive them away. On the other hand, the creatures could be emissaries of God sent to punish the people for their sins. If the farmers had wandered from the straight and narrow, then the locusts could be viewed as the servants of an angry God. In this case, the proper response would be humility and repentance to placate the angry deity, who might then send the swarm on its way. The last thing a cleric wanted to do was to pronounce an anathema on the Lord’s messengers. So, how could the Church know whether a locust swarm originated demonically or divinely?
     
    On St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1338, locusts began to decimate the farming region around Botzen in the Tyrol of modern-day Austria. To determine the proper course of events—repentance or curse—the church convened a trial of the insects before the ecclesiastical court at Kaltern. The trial followed what had become a standard sequence of events. First came a petition from those seeking redress. If the petition was accepted, the proceedings next involved a declaration or plea on behalf of the inhabitants. This was a flowery speech concerning the