even if they were reared by men who speculated on their
future value as slaves or prostitutes. As a corollary of the
legislation against infanticide, institutions to care for
foundlings came into existence. Such institutions rank as
charitable and humanitarian. Their history is such as to make
infanticide seem kind. In 374 infanticide was made a crime
punishable by death. Justinian provided that foundlings should be
free.[977] Infanticide continued to be customary. The church
worked against it by the introduction of the mystic religious
element. The infants died unbaptized. As the religion took a more
and more ritualistic character this fact affected the minds of
the masses more than the suffering or death of the infants ever
had. In a cold estimate of facts it was also questionable whether
the infants suffered any great harm, and the popular estimate of
the crime of extinguishing a life before any interests had
clustered around it was very lenient. "The criminality of
abortion was immeasurably aggravated when it was believed to
involve not only the extinction of a transient life, but also the
damnation of an immortal soul."[978] The religious interest was
thus brought to reenforce the love of children in the struggle
against the old custom. The canon law also construed it as
murder. Through the Middle Ages the sale of children was not
common, but the custom of exposure continued.[979] The primitive
usages of the Teutons included exposure of infants. The father by
taking the child up from the ground ordained that it should live.
It was then bathed and named. Rulers exposed infants lest
dependent persons should be multiplied. Evil dreams also caused
exposure. When the Icelanders accepted Christianity a minority
stipulated that they should still be allowed to eat horseflesh
and to practice exposure of infants.[980] In old German law
infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty
mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the
ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster,
and a viper should also be placed in the sack.[981] In ancient
Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them
alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision
for the child and shame at the disgrace of having become the
father of a daughter.[982] In the Koran it