Figure 1. The British Library, Harleian Ms. 4431, f. 101
The image of Diana as a huntress and goddess of the moon shows her striking down men and
women on earth with arrows of madness. The connection between the moon, which is
traditionally a watery and feminine planet, and insanity served to reiterate the connection of
insanity and women. There were instances in which insanity was attributed to sanctity. Such
is the case of Margery Kempe, who had gone ‘owt of hir mende’ and was most likely suffering
from postpartum depression claiming to see visions of God and Jesus. 10 Though, on the
whole, insanity arose a particular fear and unease; ‘God in his justice inflicts disease on the
unrepentant sinner as a punishment’ and insanity was a most dreaded form. 11 Given societal
preoccupations about the weaknesses of women, it is no surprise that jurors were more readily
able to be convinced a woman was suffering from a bout of insanity as opposed to a man. In
cases of infanticide, ‘more recently, insanity in its various guises (puerperal insanity,
postpartum depression) has come to dominate historical studies of murdering mothers’. 12 It
seems that ‘the very sanctity of the mother-child bond...[led] many jurors... [to believe] that for
a mother to violate that bond, she must be insane’. 13
It certainly seems that this idea, concerning married women, was adopted by almost
all jurors within Medieval England. Many justice itinerant documents and King’s bench records
show that married women accused of infanticide were almost always declared insane and
pardoned. Matilda, wife of Walter Levying, suffered from ague and frenzy and had killed her
Ibid., 10; Margery. Kempe. The Book of Margery Kempe, (ed.) Sanford .B. Meeche, (Oxford
University Press, 1940), 6
11 Jerome. Kroll and Bernard. Bachrach, ‘Sin and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages’, Psychological
Medicine, 14, (1984), 507
12 Butler, 61
13 Ibid., 76
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