From Sin to Crime: Laws on Infanticide in the Middle Ages

This is the second of three papers investigating the legislative history concerning infanticide. It compares the efforts of various states to protect the newborn infant between 534 and 1532 CE. When the Roman Empire collapsed in the 5th century, the jurisdiction of infanticide was relegated to the church, which regarded carnal delicts a sin rather than a crime. The punishment - public penance of the mother for 7-15 years - was milder than that which the murder of an adult would incur. The Council of Florence decreed in 1439 that the souls of children who died without having been baptized descend to hell. This turned infanticide from a penitential sin to the most heinous of all crimes. The states passed laws that abominated infanticide even more than the murder of older humans and punished women with ever more cruel forms of execution. Towards the men, however, who usually abandoned the women they had impregnated, the laws were lenient. Churches and society continued to vilify illegitimate birth, thus enhancing rather than preventing infanticide. The Habsburg-German legislation of 1532 ordained to torture any woman who had concealed pregnancy and birth and claimed the infant was stillborn. Legislation developed similarly in other countries, albeit at a different speed. French (1556) and British (1623) legislation reversed the burden of proof and demanded the death penalty for concealing pregnancy and birth when a dead infant was found.