This remark is borne out by Tertullian’s apostrophe—
“Woman! thou oughtest always to walk in mourning and rags, thine eyes filled with tears of repentance, to make men forget that thou hast been the destruction of the race. Woman, thou art the gate of hell.”
A curious contradiction appears in theological teaching. It is difficult to reconcile the conception of womanhood which found its expression in Mariolatry with that which was given voice to by the Fathers, which proclaimed woman unfit to receive the Eucharist in her naked hands, which forbade her to approach the altar,[32] which taught that she was a temptation in man’s way to try him, which regarded the married state as a condition of sin, and even among the laity exalted virginity and celibacy as a species of sainthood. In a treatise on chastity attributed to Sixtus III., married people are said to risk, though not entirely to forfeit, eternal happiness. St. Martin of Tours considered marriage pardonable, but virginity glorious. St. Jerome spoke of marriage as at best a vice: “All that we can do is to excuse and purify it.” Tertullian was much stronger: “Celibacy,” he wrote, “must be chosen, though the human race perish in consequence.”
The higher conception of womanhood was an ideal only, a theme for poets, a dream of saints; the lower conception was the guide for common life, the basis of everyday teaching. It was this lower conception which, in different ways, determined women’s position in society. Gradually the precepts of the canon law found their way into common law, and the subordination enforced upon women in matters spiritual was extended to matters temporal. The supremacy which canon law obtained is easily accounted for when we compare the disciplined character of all ecclesiastical as compared with lay government, the training of the priest with that of the noble, the ignorance pervading all classes, and the rude character of the legislation administered in feudal society.
The Roman conquest brought the legislative code of the empire into Britain, but with the advent of Christianity Roman law was gradually coloured by ecclesiastical law, and assumed a different complexion. Some writers go so far as to say that Roman law was entirely superseded. Through the law the Church kept an invisible hold upon the people, and compelled subjugation to its decrees. The Church, however, did not need shelter or excuse for any of its acts. It was powerful enough to command obedience to whatever it chose to decree. There was no influence greater, no authority more dreaded. Its rival, education, was but a puny stripling, without armour or weapons.
In the tenth century we find a repetition of the ecclesiastical law excluding women from certain parts of the church. There is a Saxon constitution which runs—
“We charge that at the time when the priest sings mass no woman be nigh the altar, but that they stand in their own place, and that the mass priest there receive of them what they are willing to offer.”
Women were not suffered to penetrate within the altar precincts in the sixteenth century. It is related that Sir Thomas More’s wife did not sit with her husband in the chancel, but in some other part of the church, in what are described as the common parish seats.
The entrance of women within the Church of Durham was limited to a certain point in the nave marked by a blue cross on the marble pavement, in accordance with the rule of St. Cuthbert. One day in the year 1333, Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., paid a visit to Durham Cathedral, supped with the king in the Prior’s chamber, and retired to rest in the apartment arranged for her husband in the priory. The monks were scandalized, and sought an interview with the king, who bade the queen rise, which she did immediately, and, clad only in her night array, went over from the priory buildings to the castle for the night, beseeching St. Cuthbert’s pardon for having polluted sacred ground with her presence.
Ecclesiastical law affected women very disastrously by the enforcement of priestly celibacy. Although against the rules of the Church, marriage was common among the clergy in pre-Norman times, especially in the north of England. Substantial reasons existed against allowing priests to marry. There were complaints that the married clergy took the Church property to provide marriage portions for their sons and daughters and legacies for their wives, and were generally in the habit of applying ecclesiastical funds to their private uses.