ABSTRACT
The foundation of the inequality between men and women is to be found in seemingly secondary legal arguments whose theory reflected a continuing overlap between civil and criminal law. In spite of great historical upheavals, the law's attitude to women has retained numerous ambiguities over a long period of time. The monumental and extremely successful Praxis et theorica criminalis of Prospero Farinaccio exercised a very considerable influence on the legal culture and became a fundamental reference point in the system of common law in the modern era. The concept of fragilitas sexus appeared in the work as the basis for the diminished responsibility of women. Excluding women from bearing witness in wills represented a different and special case. Jurists asked themselves whether women were endowed with reason comparable to men's, or whether they were mentally inferior, and whether it was permissible for them to claim ignorance of the law on the basis of this inferiority.
