From XXXX to Crime: Laws on Infanticide in the Middle Ages.

@entity1 @entity26634
UNASSIGNED: This is the second of three papers investigating the legislative history concerning infanticide. It compares the efforts of various states to protect the newborn @entity1 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 @entity26634 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 @entity1 who died without having been baptized descend to hell. This turned infanticide from a penitential @entity26634 to the most heinous of all crimes. The states passed laws that abominated infanticide even more than the murder of older @entity1 and punished @entity1 with ever more cruel forms of execution. Towards the @entity1 , however, who usually abandoned the @entity1 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 @entity1 who had concealed pregnancy and birth and claimed the @entity1 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 @entity1 was found.
