Woman, Church & State. Gage Matilda Joslyn

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206

See Reeves. —Early English Law.

207

Hollingshed’s Chronicles.

The foundation of old common law seems traceable to Martia, the widow of Guilliame, left regent of her husband’s kingdom, comprising a part of Britain, two hundred years prior to the christian era. This queen directed her attention to framing a system of laws which acquired for her the surname of “Proba,” or “The Just.” They were evidently one of the three parts under which the common law is divided, although under canon law the entire property of the wife became that of the husband upon marriage.

208

In England, in 1538, or even earlier, it was calculated that besides the tithes, one-third of the kingdom was ecclesiastical property, and that these vast possessions were devoted to the support of a body of men who found their whole serious occupation in destroying the virtue of women. Lea. —Sacerdotal Celibacy.

209

The pagan laws during the Empire had been continually repealing the old disabilities of women; and the legislative movement in their favor continued with unabated force from Constantine to Justinian, and appeared also in some of the early laws of the barbarians. But, in the whole feudal legislation, women were placed in a much lower legal position than in the Pagan Empire. In addition to the personal restrictions which grew necessarily out of the Catholic Christian doctrines concerning divorce, and the subordination of the weaker sex, we find numerous and stringent enactments, which rendered it impossible for women to succeed to any considerable amount of property, and which almost reduced them to the alternative of marriage or a nunnery. The complete inferiority of the sex was continually maintained by law; and that generous public opinion which in Rome had frequently revolted against the injustice done to girls, in depriving them of the greater part of the inheritance of their fathers, totally disappeared. Wherever the canon law has been the basis of legislation, we find laws of succession sacrificing the interests of daughters and of wives, and a state of public opinion which has been formed and regulated by these laws; nor was any serious attempt made to abolish them till the close of the last century. The French Revolutionists, though rejecting the proposal of Sieyes and Condorcet to accord political emancipation to women, established at least an equal succession of sons and daughters, and thus initiated a great reformation of both law and opinion, which sooner or later must traverse the world. Lecky. —Hist. Morals, Vol. II, pp. 357-359.

210

Sheldon Amos. —Science of Law.

211

Ibid.

212

Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s rights. Society exists for man only; for women merely as they are represented by some man; are in the mundt or keeping of some man. —Descriptive Sociology of England.

213

This slavish condition of the wife yet prevails in over one-half the states of the union.

214

. The relations in respect to property which exist between husband and wife in England, is solely grounded on her not being assumed at common law to have sufficient command of her purse or of her future actions wherewith to procure the materials for making a contract. The legal presumption then is, that she did not intend to make one, and therefore the allegation that she did make a contract would simply on the face of it be a fraud. Amos. —Science of Law.

215

The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the sexes as a principle to the code of equity. The situation of the Roman woman, whether married or single, became one of great personal and proprietary independence; but Christianity tended somewhat from the very first to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has adopted those rules concerning the position of woman, which belong peculiarly to an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply injured civilization. – Sir Henry Maine.

216

Under the Commonwealth, society assumed a new and stern aspect. Women were in disgrace; it was everywhere declared from the pulpit that woman caused man’s expulsion from Paradise, and ought to be shunned by Christians as one of the greatest temptations of Satan. “Man,” said they, “is conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity; it was his complacency to woman that caused his first debasement; let man not therefore glory in his shame; let him not worship the fountain of his corruption.” Learning and accomplishments were alike discouraged, and women confined to a knowledge of cooking, family medicines and the unintelligible theological discussions of the day. Lydia Maria Child. —History of Woman.

217

Many women made their entrance into literature through the medium of a cook book, thus virtually apologizing for the use of a pen.

218

The slavish superstition under which church teaching still keeps the minds of men was no less shown by the thousands who visited the St. Anne relic in the United States. Nor are Protestants but little less under the same superstition, accepting the teaching of the church without investigation. An educated Protestant girl, upon her return from Europe, recently, gravely declared that during her absence she had seen the spear which pierced the Saviour’s side.

219

The most interesting of all to Americans is the copy of the American Constitution that President Cleveland sent to the Vatican by Cardinal Gibbons. It is printed on vellum in richly illuminated English characters, and bound in white and red. It is enclosed in a case of purple plush with gold hinges, and bears this autographic inscription by President Cleveland:

Upon the next page, beneath an American eagle printed in gold, is this inscription:

The page bearing this inscription and all the fly leaves were of exquisite watered silk.

220

“Owing to the pope’s refusal to accept the gifts of the king and queen of Italy on the occasion of his jubilee, all the members of the House of Savoy, including the Duke d’Aosta and the Princess Clotilde, have omitted to send offerings. This is the fly in the jubilee ointment of Pope Leo XIII., and settles the question of concessions of temporal power. Nevertheless, the day is passed when the claim of ‘imprisonment in the Vatican’ will further avail the pope.”

221

When Linnaeus published his sexual system of plants, in the eighteenth century, he was ridiculed and shunned as one who had degraded nature.

222

In the dominion of the Count de Foix, the lord had right once in his lifetime to take, without payment, a certain quantity of goods from the stores of each tenant. Cesar Cantu. —Histoire Universelle.

223

Two women seized by German soldiers were covered with tar, rolled in feathers, and exhibited in the camp as a new species of bird.

224

Among the privileges always claimed, and frequently enforced by the feudalry, was the custom of the lord of the manor to lie the first night with the bride of his tenant. —Sketches of Feudalism, p. 109.

By the law of “Marquette” under the feudal system (which rested on personal vassalage), to the “lord of the soil” belonged the privilege of first entering the nuptial couch unless the husband had СКАЧАТЬ