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