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> "Any women who kept an infant less than 1 year old in her bed ... is ipso facto excommunicated," the church declared in Milan in 1576. I can find no source c
by dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
> "Any women who kept an infant less than 1 year old in her bed ... is ipso facto excommunicated," the church declared in Milan in 1576.
I can find no source confirming this. Ipso facto means "automatically", so this can't be done by a bishop, but only declared as canonical law by either a Council or a pope. No trace of a Council in Milan in 1576 - the previous one was in Trent. So this would have to be Gregory XIII visiting Milan for some reason. I'm curious to find out who really did it and why. And whether it was actually the church (i.e. the pope/council) or just a local bishop.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoOK, so it looks like there actually was a Fourth Provincial Council held in Milan in 1576. Eleven bishops were present: https://archive.org/details/amanualofcouncil01landuoft https://archive.org/details/amanualofcouncil01landuoft - although I'm not sure how binding the decisions of this Council are (if you live in Rome, are you excommunicated, too?). The references lead to Richard Trexler's article "Infanticide in Florence" in Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence which is out of print.