[232] Polak, Persien, i. 217.
[233] Ploss, Das Weib, i. 846 sq.
[234] Digesta, xlvii. 11. 4. Cf. Rein, Criminalrecht der Römer, p. 447.
[235] Paulus, quoted in Digesta, xxv. 3, 4.
[236] Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 21 sq.
[237] Seneca, Ad Helviam, 16.
[238] Spangenberg, ‘Verbrechen der Abtreibung der Leibesfrucht,’ in Neues Archiv des Criminalrechts, ii. 23.
[239] Ibid. ii. 22.
Very different opinions were held by the Christians. A sanctity, previously unheard of, was attached to human life from the very beginning. Feticide was regarded as a form of murder. “Prevention of birth,” says Tertullian, “is a precipitation of murder; nor does it matter whether one take away a life when formed, or drive it away while forming. He also is a man who is about to be one. Even every fruit already exists in its seed.”[240] St. Augustine, again, makes a distinction between an embryo which has already been formed, and an embryo as yet unformed. From the creation of Adam, he says, it appears that the body is made before the soul. Before the embryo has been endowed with a soul it is an embryo informatus, and its artificial abortion is to be punished with a fine only; but the embryo formatus is an animate being, and to destroy it is nothing less than murder, a crime punishable with death.[241] This distinction between an animate and inanimate fetus was embodied both in Canon[242] and Justinian law,[243] and passed subsequently into various lawbooks.[244] And a woman who destroyed her animate embryo was punished with death.[245]
[240] Tertullian, Apologeticus, 9 (Migne op. cit. i. 319 sq.).