Woman, Church & State. Gage Matilda Joslyn

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СКАЧАТЬ in Greek was preserved in the old Oxford Library; this letter spoke of “St. Peter and Paul and the apostles who were married.” Another letter of St. Ignatius is still extant in the Vatican Library. Tussian and others who have seen it declare that it also speaks of St. Paul as a married man.67 But tenderness toward woman does not appear in his teachings; man is represented as the master, “the head” of woman. In consonance with his teaching, responsibility has been denied her through the ages; although the Church has practically held her amenable for the ruin of the world, prescribing penance and hurling anathemas against her whom it has characterized as the “door of hell.”

      At a synod in Winchester in the eighth century, St. Dunstan, famed for his hatred of women, made strenuous effort to enforce celibate life. It was asserted to be so highly immoral for a priest to marry, that even a wooden cross had audibly declared against the horrid practice.68 Although in the third century marriage was permitted to all orders of the clergy,69 yet the very ancient “Gospel of the Egyptians,” endorsed as canonical by Clement of Alexandria, taught celibacy. These old christian theologians found the nature of woman a prolific subject of discussion, a large party classing her among brutes without soul or reason. As early as the sixth century a council at Macon (585), fifty-nine bishops taking part, devoted its time to a discussion of this question, “Does woman possess a soul?” Upon one side it was argued that woman should not be called “homo”; upon the opposite side that she should, because, first, the Scriptures declared that God created man, male and female; second, that Jesus Christ, son of a woman, is called the son of man. Christian women were therefore allowed to remain human beings in the eyes of the clergy, even though considered very weak and bad ones. But nearly a thousand years after this decision in favor of the humanity of the women of Christian Europe, it was still contended that the women of newly discovered America belonged to the brute creation, possessing neither souls nor reason.70 As late as the end of the sixteenth century an anonymous work appeared, arguing that women were no part of mankind, but a species of intermediate animal between the human and the brute creation. (Mulieres non est homines, etc.) Mediaeval christian writings show many discussions upon this point, the influence of these old assertions still manifesting themselves.

      Until the time of Peter the Great, women were not recognized as human beings in that great division of Christendom known as the Greek church, the census of that empire counting only males, or so many “souls” – no woman named. Traces of this old belief have not been found wanting in our own country within the century. As late as the Woman’s Rights Convention in Philadelphia, 1854, an objector in the audience cried out: “Let women first prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it.”

      Everything connected with woman was held to be unclean. It is stated that Agathro desired the Sophist Herodes to get ready for him the next morning a vessel full of pure milk, that is to say which had not been milked by the hand of a woman. But he perceived as soon as it was offered to him that it was not such as he desired, protesting that the scent of her hands who had milked it offended his nostrils. In the oldest European churches great distinction was made between the purity of man and woman. At an early date woman was forbidden to receive the Eucharist into her naked hand on account of her impurity,71 or to sing in church on account of her inherent wickedness. To such an extent was this opposition carried, that the church of the middle ages did not hesitate to provide itself with eunuchs in order to supply cathedral choirs with the soprano tones inhering by nature in woman alone. One of the principal charges against the Huguenots was that they permitted women to sing in church, using their voices in praise of God contrary to the express command of St. Paul, Catherine de Medicis reproaching them for this great sin.72 The massacre at St. Bartholomew, when 30,000 men, women and children lost their lives, and the entire destruction of many families of purest character took place, with an additional great loss to France from the self-imposed banishment of hundreds more, may be traced to the teaching of St. Paul that woman should keep silence in the church. This doctrine also crossed the ocean with the Puritan Fathers, and has appeared in America under many forms.73

      The Christianity of the ages teaching the existence of a superior and inferior sex, possessing different rights under the law and in the church, it has been easy to bring man and woman under accountability to a different code of morals. For this double code the church is largely indebted to the subtle and acute Paul, who saw in the new religion but an enlarged Judaism that should give prominence to Abraham and his seed from whom Christ claimed descent. His conversion did not remove his old Jewish contempt for woman, as shown in his temple service, the law forbidding her entrance beyond the outer court. Nor could he divest himself of the spirit of the old morning prayer which daily led each Jew to thank God that he was not born a heathen, a slave or a woman.

      He brought into the new dispensation the influence of the old ceremonial law, which regarded woman as unclean. The Jewish exclusion of forty days from even the outer court of the sanctuary to the woman who had given birth to a son, and of twice that period, or eighty days, if a daughter had been born, was terminated in both religions by a sin-offering in expiation of the mother’s crime for having, at the peril of her own, brought another human being into life.74 This Old Testament teaching degraded the life-giving principle exemplified in motherhood, and in a two-fold way lessened the nation’s regard for womanhood. First, through the sin-offering and purification demanded of the mother; second, by its doubling the period of exclusion from the temple in case a girl was given to the world.75 The birth of girls even under Christianity has everywhere been looked upon as an infliction, and thousands have been immured in convents, there to die of despair or to linger through years,76 the victim alike of father and of priest.

      The influence of Judaism extended through Christendom. The custom of purification after maternity inherited by the church from Judaism brought with it into Christianity the same double restriction and chastening of the mother in case her infant proved a girl, a gift as propitiation or expiation being required. Uncleanliness was attributed to woman in every function of her being; the purification of the Virgin Mary, who was not exempt, when after the birth of a God, being used as an incontrovertible argument in proof. A festival of the purification of the Virgin Mary, adopted from paganism, was introduced into Rome at an early date, thus perpetuating a belief in the uncleanliness of motherhood. The Church in the Roman Empire soon united with the State77 in imposing new restrictions upon women. Since the Reformation the mother’s duty of expiation has been confirmed by the Anglican Church, and is known in England as “churching.” Directions as to the woman’s dress at this time was early made the subject of a canon.78 She was to be decently appareled. This term “decently,” variously interpreted, was at times the occasion of serious trouble. In 1661, during the reign of James I, the Chancellor of Norwich ordered that every woman who came to be churched should be covered with a white veil. A woman who refused to conform to this order was excommunicated for contempt. She prayed a prohibition, alleging that such order was not warranted by any custom or Canon of the Church of England. The judges of the civil court, finding themselves incompetent to decide upon such a momentous question, requested the opinion of the archbishop of Canterbury. Not willing to trust his own judgment, that dignitary convened several bishops for consultation. Their decision was against the woman, this Protestant Council upon woman’s dress declaring that it was the ancient usage of the Church of England for women who were to be churched to come veiled, and a prohibition was denied.

      The doctrine that woman must remain covered when in the sacred church building shows itself in the United States.79 In many instances under Christianity, woman has been entirely excluded from religious houses and church buildings. When Pope BonifaceСКАЧАТЬ