[1040] Farrar, Seekers after God, 10 ff.
[1041] Capes, Early Empire, 223 ff., discusses the exaggeration of the satirists; and in his Age of the Antonines, 85, 86, 89, 90, 117 ff., he describes the family life of Marcus Aurelius and analyzes his meditations.
[1042] Taine, Ancient Régime, 1-5.
[1043] Eckenstein, Woman under Monasticism, 5, 478. This important and very interesting book throws much new light on the position of woman in the Middle Ages. The convent was a refuge from the "tyranny" of the family; and the author believes that the desire for independence was a survival of the "mother-age." The woman saint is thus a successor of the "tribal goddess" and the "heathen prophetess."
[1044] The doctrine that woman was the cause of the "original sin" arose among the early fathers of the church, and it was well established by the time of Augustine. At the Council of Macon (585) the question, "Does woman possess a soul?" was seriously discussed. "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."—Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 56.
Nevertheless for many this problem remained for centuries a topic for theological debate. In 1595 appeared Acidalius's Disputatio nova contra mulieres, qua probatur eas homines non esse. In the same year it was republished, with an answer, by Simon Geddicus under the common title, Disputatio perjucunda, qua anonymus probare nititur mulieres homines non esse: cui opposita est Simonis Geddici sacros. theologiae doctoris defensio sexus muliebris (editio novissima, Hagae-Comitis, 1644). At the end Simon writes: "Scriptum Halae Saxonum, 10. Februarii, Anno Filii Dei nati, Hominis veri, ex Maria Virgine, homine vera, 1595."
Still later (1667) Feyerabend, De privilegiis mulierum (3d ed., Jena, 1672), 2-5, starts with the inquiry, "an mulieres sint homines?"
[1045] For details consult Theiner, Die Einführung der erz. Ehelosigkeit, I, 44 ff., 54-60, 167 ff., 239, 296, passim; II, 183-209; III, 96-148 (contemporary evidence for the period 1448 to the Reformation), 305 ff. (influence of the Jesuits on morals); Lea, Sacerdotal Celibacy, 78 ff., 109 ff., 115 ff., 129, 135 ff., 161-77, 330-61, 566-80 (abuse of the confessional, especially since the Council of Trent), 631 ff.; idem, Hist. of Auricular Confession, I, 378-400 (solicitations), 240 ff., 261, 272, 426 ff.; Lecky, Hist. of European Morals, II, 120 ff., 148 ff., 316-72; Huth, Marriage of Near Kin, 108 ff.; the vigorous arraignment of the church and the canon law for their alleged degrading influence on woman by Gage, Woman, Church, and State, 49 ff., 113 ff., 152 ff.; and idem, in Hist. of Woman Suffrage, I, 753-99. For the opposite view read Christian Marriage, by Rev. William Humphrey, S. J.; Zimmermann, Der Priester-Cölibat, 11 ff.; Gide, La femme, 169-82; and compare Thwing, The Family, 45 ff.; Letters on the Const. Celibacy of the Clergy, 266 ff., 294 ff.; and Bouvet, De la confession et du célibat des prêtres, 195-238, containing extracts from Burchard's Decretorum, showing the abominable questions put to women. For the literature relating to celibacy (to 1887) see especially Roskovány's Coelibatus et breviarium (13 vols., 1861-88), enumerating 6,785 books, essays, and articles on the subject, of which (according to Theiner, op. cit., III, 379) 3,285 are antagonistic.
[1046] Thoroughly to appreciate the nature of the controversy over the sacramental nature of marriage the writings of the Reformation Fathers should be studied. See General Index to the Parker Society publications; and cf. Madan's Thelyphthora, already mentioned.
[1047] The early Fathers render the Greek μυστήριον by sacramentum, which is defined by St. Augustine as "the visible form of invisible grace," or "a sign of a sacred thing"; Encyc. Brit., XXI, 131. Cf. also Friedberg, Eheschliessung, 153, 154; Freisen, Geschichte des can. Eherechts, 29 ff.; Zhishman, Das Eherecht der orient. Kirche, 124 ff.; Oswald, Die dogmat. Lehre von den heil. Sakramenten, I, 25 ff.; Perrone, De mat. christ., I, 1-21; Schulte, Lehrbuch, 349; Richter, Lehrbuch, 1044, 1045; Thwing, The Family, 81; and the monograph of Baier, Die Naturehe in ihrem Verhältniss zur christlich-sakramentalen Ehe; Amat, Treatise on Matrimony, 3 ff.