Subjective Application of Municipal Law in Cases of Infanticide on the Estates of Trebon and Smečno in the Early Modern Era
Abstract
In the Early Modern Period the crime of infanticide belonged to the group of relatively widespread capital crimes, while its particularity was that it was conditioned by gender. Concurrently it is interesting to see that specific motivations forcing concrete women to commit that threshold crime differed from case to case as well as landlords' attitude to individual cases and their punishment.
E. g. Ferdinand of Schwarzenberg was trying for an honest investigation of those crimes and in the moments when he did not know what to do, he did not hesitate to ask for assistance of the Court of Appeals in Prague.
He did not even hide his resentment if he thought the penalty had been too lenient. Conversely Jaroslav Bořita of Martinice did not insist on the impartial punishment of Dorota Kocurová so much.
He was even willing to use that specific case to demonstrate his power and present himself as a defender of the Catholic faith. The current cases thus show that even in cases of infanticide the municipal law was subject to its subjective application.