Arrert (sic.) de la Cour de Parlement de Dauphine, contre les femmes qui ayans concu enfans par moyens des-honnetes, cachent leur grossesse, & tuent leur fruict, du 12 Iuillet 1664

S.l. (Grenoble [?]): s. n., 1664. Very good. First edition thus (OCLC lists one copy at Yale with the same title, but different text and date - 1638; this edition not in OCLC); 8 3/4 x 6 1/4; single leaf, removed, text to recto only; illustrated with a woodcut border above the title; a small manuscript note to top margin; minor spotting to left margin; in very good condition. Reaffirming a royal edict, first issued in 1556, the document dealt with prostitutes, or women, who had conceived in a dishonest way, and concealed their pregnancy, and after giving birth killed their infants and burried them, or threw them away. The women were to be punished by death, the manner of which was to be determined depending on the gruesomeness of the particular case. The paper contained an extract of the original 1556 edict, as well, which also required all unmarried women to officially declare their pregnancy and ordered the death penalty for any such mother, whose infant died before receiving proper baptism, regardless if an infanticide had actually occured.In early modern Europe, pregnant unmarried women could face punishment for fornication and if they had a miscarriage or the newborn died, they could be accused of infanticide, but the courts rarely saw such cases, as the magistrates were aware of the physicians' limitations in diagnosing and distinguishing a stillbirth, a natural-cause death, and a murder. It all chaged throughout most of Europe in the 16th century, arguably beginning with the above-mentioned 1556 edict in France, which was followed by similar ones in England and Germany in the 1600s and the early-1700s.