Dretinghe. In 1240, Sabina was charged with killing her son who was one night old. She came to court and acknowledged that the child who was born, was dead. Further to this, Sabina claimed that at the time she was out of her mind [ tunc temporis demens fuit ]. She argued that because she had not killed her infant son intentionally she had willingly come before the jury. The jury determined that the boy had only lived for one night and at the time of his murder, Sabina was of full sense and full memory [ tunc temporis fuit in bono sensu et bone memorie ], therefore they decided that she should be burnt [ ideo consideratum est quod conburatur ]. 25 For Sabina,‘ the punishment itself …[ was ] obviously an extreme one, especially when compared to those … where a plea of insanity was involved’. 26 It seems plausible to infer that Sabina’ s plea was rejected due to her status as a single woman.
In 1470, Joan Rose was accused by the Consistory of the ecclesiastical court at Canterbury of killing her newborn son. The judge ordered that Joan should dress in penitential garb and go before the procession of the parish church of Hythe. She was ordered to do so on three Sundays with a wax candle of half a pound in her right hand and the knife with which she killed her son, or a similar knife, in her left hand. She was instructed to go twice around the markets of Canterbury, Faversham and Ashford in a similar fashion. 27 In the case of Joan Rose, it would not be extreme to suspect that the Consistory of the diocese of Canterbury were using this as an example and a warning to others of the public humiliation they would have to endure should they commit the same or a similar crime. Other deterrents given to ward people away from committing infanticide were found within literary and prescriptive texts. Herrad of Landsberg, in her Hortus deliciarum, sought to warn sisters entering into her convent from breaking their vows of chastity. Herrad cites Caesarius of Heisterbach’ s story of a nun who died without confessing her sins of fornication and infanticide. Due to this, after her death she appeared as a ghostly figure to a kinswoman as condemned eternally to carry her burning child, whose fire ceaselessly tormented and devoured her. 28 The vivid depiction of a wandering nun with her burning infant, unable to find peace after death, is evocative. Again, the fate of the nun( a single woman), even in the afterlife, is most severe, inferably due to her fornication outside of marriage as opposed to murdering a child.
Another case of infanticide appears in the coroner’ s report of 1286. Matilda Heylof was indicted for placing her infant in oil in a marsh area near the floodgate [ posuit in quadam olla apud flodgate marisco ]. The record specifically states that the child had no name [ nullum nomen habentem ]. Matilda fled and was put into exigent and waived( in the Middle Ages, a woman was unable to be outlawed and so waiving was a female equivalent; Matilda now found
25
TNA: JUST 1 / 818, m. 47, 1240.
26
Kellum, 374
27
Canterbury Act Book, Y. 1.10, f. 42r
28
Herrad of Landsberg, Hortus deliciarum, ed Walter( Strassburg, 1952), Pl. XLIV. Cf
12