TNTL 112

Oebele Vries

Het raadselachtige rechtswoord 'heidenmoord'

Abstract - An intriguing legal term in Dutch is heidenmoord ('heathen murder'), which seems to occur in a few scattered texts from the 15th-17th centuries only. Partly in the light of attestations of the equivalent word in Old Frisian and Old Norse sources the following meanings can be established: 1) the killing of the foetus by assaulting a pregnant woman, 2) the killing of the foetus by abortion, 3) child-murder (not found in Dutch sources), 4) the killing of a man by a quadruped. The meaning of 'heathen' in this context is: unbaptized person (which includes the foetus), or dumb, unwitting creature.