Women, Torture, and Medicine in Early Modern Europe

Judicial torture was integral to the early modern system of criminal justice. Systematic and regulated, torture applied especially to two kinds of cases: 1) in which the proven criminal stubbornly refused to confess, denying the final certification of a capital crime; 2) in which the crime was committed in secret, effectively precluding the presence of witnesses. The second class of cases applied to women in two particular kinds of crimes–witchcraft, and more particularly, reproductive crimes, such as abortion, fornication, and infanticide. Here torture seemed necessary when sufficient “circumstantial” indications of guilt substituted for the the lack of eyewitness testimony. The rise of forensic medicine in the 16th and 17th century brought new tools (and ancient theories) to the investigative and inquisitorial process. This paper will examine the uses of forensic science to detect the crime itself and establish a “corpus delicti,” and to probe a woman’s body to determine the possibility of guilt. This meant in practice judging a woman’s “virginity” but also considering whether she was or had been pregnant, and whether she had recently given birth. Whether the medicine was correct in modern terms is less important than the standards employed by early modern medical practitioners. This research will involve surveying the nascent literature of forensic medicine in Italy and Germany but also procedural manuals for midwives and finally German criminal records to determine how courts and inquisitors employed and understood such knowledge.