Man it pronounced a person first, with rights, privileges, and protection as such. Incidentally he might also be a husband, a father, or a son. His welfare, duties, and rights as a person, as a human being, were apart from and superior to those that were special and incidental. He received consideration always as a person. He might be dealt with as husband or father.
But ignoring all her mental life and denying that she had any, and ignoring all her physical possibilities, ambitions, desires, and capabilities as a person, the Church narrowed woman's life and restricted her energies into a compass where its power over her became absolute and her subjection certain. Nor has the loss been wholly to woman, for any influence which cripples the mother's capacity of endowment takes cruel revenge on the race.*
* "It is not impossible but that a more correct
understanding of the laws of life and heredity may establish
the fact that because of the subjection of woman, the entire
race has been mentally dwarfed and physically weakened."
—Gamble.
From this outlook the debt of civilization to the Church is heavy indeed. Is it a debt of gratitude?
Under this head there is space for but one point farther, out of the great store at hand.
The clergy were licensed to commit crime. They got up a neat little scheme called "benefit of clergy" by which they were secure from the punishment meted out to other criminals. The relief offered did sometimes reach other men, but as learning was largely confined to the clergy they were the chief beneficiaries, as the name implies and as was the intent of the law. Any man who could read was allowed "benefit of clergy;" in other words, his punishment was lightened or entirely omitted. But a woman, though she were a perfect mine of wisdom and could read in any number of languages, could receive no such benefit, because she could not take holy orders. They first enacted that she should not take orders, and then they denied to her the relief which only that ability could give. So great a favorite was woman with the Church!
The ordinary male criminal received the ordinary punishment, the clergy received none; and in order that the requisite gross amount of suffering for crime should be inflicted on somebody, the clergy enacted that woman should receive their share vicariously in addition to her own, and then to this they added such interest as would make the twenty-per-cent-a-month men of Wall street ashamed of their stupid financiering.
Thus the Church arrogated to itself the exclusive right to commit crime with impunity, and also claimed and exercised the right to prevent women from learning to read. If she still persisted it could then punish her doubly, because she had no right to learn.
For offenses for which ordinary men were hanged, women were burned alive, and priests were glorified. For larceny a man was branded in the hand or imprisoned for a few months; while for a first offence of the kind a woman was kindly permitted to be hanged or beheaded without benefit of clergy; and the clergy went scot free.* The Church did then as it does now, it claimed all the benefits of citizenship and paid none of the penalties and bore none of the burdens.**
* Blackstone. Christian.
** It still claims exemption from taxation, thus throwing
its burden on others; and it also claims immunity from the
very gambling laws which it so rigidly enforces against
other institutions.