This study focuses on three fundamental guidelines: religious monomania, legal medicine and criminal law in italian post-unification.
In a well-defined temporal context, whose chronological details concide with Italian unification (1861) and with the early decades of XX century, the author focuses on medical and legal aspects of mental illness in the form of religious monomania. In particular, from a series of criminal behaviors resulting from religious suggestions or ascetic delusions, the paper investigates the juridical-procedural implications of these events. The extensive archival documentation allows to verify Couts legale orientation in the years near by the approval of the Italian penal code (1889). In the cases focused, the diagnosis of mental alienation was followed by the declaration of non-imputability and by hospitalizarion into a mental hospital.