that abortion and contraception were gravely sinful actions ("mortal sins"), it did not apply to all mortal sins the additional penalty of excommunication. Although homicide had always required this penalty, contraception had not. Patristic and medieval theologians and physicians had long speculated and debated over the exact moment the fertilised egg became a human being. While there was broad agreement among them that life was present at conception and that it could only become a human being, the thinking was that this did not necessarily mean God had infused the rational, immortal soul into the body at conception. Following Aristotle, many in the West had theorized that the matter had to be prepared to a certain point before this could happen and, prior to then, there was only a vegetative or sensitive soul, but not a human soul. This meant that killing an organism before the human soul is infused would still be a grave sin of abortion (or at least contraception), but that it was not properly a homicide and, thus, did not require excommunication. Some theologians argued that only after proof of the "quickening" (when the mother can feel the fetus's movement in her womb, usually about 20 weeks into gestation) that there was incontrovertible evidence that ensoulment had already occurred. Until Sixtus V, canon lawyers had applied the code from Gratian whereby excommunications were only given to abortions after the quickening. In 1588 the pope issued a papal bull, Effraenatam or Effrenatam ("Without Restraint"), which declared that the canonical penalty of excommunication would be levied for any form of contraception and for abortions at any stage in fetal development. The reasoning on the latter would be that the soul of the unborn child would be denied Heaven. Sixtus also attempted in 1586 to introduce into the secular law in Rome the Old Testament penalty for adultery, which is death. The measure ultimately failed. Death and legacy Sixtus V died on 27 August 1590 from malaria. The pope became ill with a fever on 24 August; it intensified the following day. As Sixtus V lay on his deathbed, he was loathed by his political subjects, but history has recognized him as one of the most important popes. On the negative side, he could be impulsive, obstinate, severe, and autocratic. On the positive side, he was open to large ideas and threw himself into his undertakings with energy and