Introduction 1
1. The Earliest Proponents of Criminalization 20
The Scholastic Origins of Criminal Abortion 22
Forms of Sentencing in Medieval Jurisprudence 30
Crimen in "An Age without Lawyers" (500-1050) 34
2. Early Venues of Criminalization 45
Crimen in Sacramental Confession 47
Judicial Crimen in the Ecclesiastical Courts 53
Public Penitential Crimen 59
Royal Jurisdiction in Thirteenth-Century England 66
3. Chief Agents of Criminalization 76
Legislation versus Juristic Communis Opinio 79
Communis Opinio and Peer Dissent 88
Systematic Law before the Rise of the Modern State 95
4. Principal Arguments in Favor of Criminalization 100
Successive Animation and Creatianism 102
Legal and Theological Assessments of Therapeutic Abortion 110
The Demise of Late Medieval Embryology 116
5. Objections to Crimina zation 123
Customary Indifference North and East of the River Rhine 125
Rejection in the Royal Courts of England (1327-1557) 134
6. Abortion Experts and Expertise 149
Evidence of Midwifery 152
Medical Embryology and Abortion Discourse 158
Abortifacient Prescriptions 162
7. Abortion in the Criminal Courts of the Ius Commune 171
Criminal Accusationes and Inquisitiones 173
The Rules and Safeguards of Ordinary Inquisitiones 177
Extraordinary Inquisitiones 186
8. Forms of Punishment in the Criminal Courts of the Ius Commune 198
Statutory and Customary Specifications 201
Substitute Penalties 207
Adjustment Out of Court 214
9. The Frequency of Criminal Prosecutions 220
Viable Statistical Queries 221
Geography and Patterns of Record Keeping 227
A Triad of Typical Cases 233
Bibliography 241
Index 259