Self-Murder, Sin, and Crime: Religion and Suicide in the Middle Ages Carole M. Cusack University of Sydney Abstract: From around 1000 CE, evidence for suicide in the West becomes more plentiful. Sources include chronicles, legal records, saints’ lives, and other religious texts. Motivations for suicide are familiar: “bereavement, poverty, and sudden disgrace or dismissal from a high post,” and some “suicides without obvi- ous external motive” which clerics focused on, as they viewed acedia (apathy) as demonic (Alexander Murray, “Suicide in the Middle Ages,” 3). Among Christian objections to suicide are that it deprived lords of their property, it offended against humanity, it was linked to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, and it violated the commandment “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20.13). Religious aspects of suicide motivations and punishments are here examined in terms of victims and per- petrators. Émile Durkheim’s sociology, which foregrounds anomie, dialogues with medieval historians to argue that suicide as a sin against God outweighed secular ideas of crime, and that claims of lenience toward women and those driven to self-murder are overstated. Keywords: Christianity, suicide, feudalism, despair, legal records, demonic possession Introduction F rom around 1000 CE, documentary evidence for attempted suicide and suicide in the Catholic medieval West becomes more plentiful. Sources include chronicles, histories and other “factual” texts; legal records; and saints’ lives and other holy narratives of miracles and spiritual edifcation (Murray 1998, 42). All these texts require careful interpretation, but it has been established that there are commonalities regarding the patterns of suicide over lengthy historical periods. Alexander Murray, an authority on © Journal of Religion and Violence 6:2. ISSN 0738-098X. pp. 206–224 doi: 10.5840/jrv2018103055