Men, Women, and Gods; and Other Lectures

by Helen H. Gardener

On this subject I find in Maine's "Ancient Law" these facts:

"Although women had been objects of barter and sale,
according to barbaric usages, between their male relatives,
the later Roman [Pagan] law having assumed, on the theory
of Natural Law, the equality of the sexes, control of the
person of women was quite obsolete when Christianity was
born. Her situation had become one of great personal liberty
and proprietary independence, even when married, and the
arbitrary power over her of her male relations, or her
guardian, was reduced to a nullity, while the form of
marriage conferred on the husband no superiority."
Thus as a daughter and as a wife had she grown to be honored
and recognized as an equal under Pagan rule.
"But Christianity tended from the first to narrow this
remarkable liberty.... The latest Roman [Pagan] law, so
far as touched by the constitutions of the Christian
emperors, bears marks of reaction against these great
liberal doctrines."
—Maine.
And again began the sale of women. Christianity held her as
unclean and in all respects inferior; and "during the era
which begins modern history the women of dominant races are
seen everywhere under various forms of archaic guardianship,
and the husband pays a money price to her male relations
for her. The prevalent state of religious sentiment may
explain why it is that modern jurisprudence has absorbed
among its rudiments much more than usual of those rules [archaic] concerning the position of women which belong
peculiarly to an imperfect civilization."
—Ibid.

Thus it will be seen that from the first, and extending down to the present, the Church did all she could to cast woman back into the night of the race from which in a great measure she had been rescued through the ages when Natural Law and not "revelation" was the guide of man. The laws which the Church found liberal and just toward women it discarded, and it searched back in the ages of night for such as it saw fit to re-enact for her. Of this Maine says: "The husband now draws to himself the power which formerly belonged to his wife's male relatives, the only difference being that he no longer pays anything for the privilege."

As Christians grew economical wives came cheaper than formerly, and it became a dogma that wives were not worth much anyhow, and then, too, it enabled persons of limited means to have more of them. Of a somewhat later date Maine says: "At this point heavy disabilities begin to be imposed upon wives."

That was to make marriage honorable and attractive, no doubt, and, says Maine: "It was very long before the subordination entailed on women by marriage was sensibly diminished." And what diminution it received came from men who fought against Church law.*

*See Lecky, Maine, Lea, Milman, Christian, Blackstone,
Morley, and others for ample proof of this fact

It was only the crumbs of liberty, honor, and justice extorted by men who fought the Church on behalf of wives, that lightened their most oppressive burdens. It was true then, and it is true to-day, that women owe what justice and freedom and power they possess to the fact that the best and clearest-headed men are more honorable than our religion, and that they have invited Moses and St. Paul to take a back seat Moses has complied, and St. Paul is half-way down the aisle.

Some of the clergy now explain that although Paul may have written certain things inimical to women, he did not mean them, so it is all right. Such passages as 1 Cor. xi. 3-9; xiv. 34-35; and Eph. v. 22-24, are now explained to be intended in a purely Pickwickian sense; and a Rev. Mr. Boyd, of St. Louis, has even gone so far as to produce the doughty apostle before a woman-suffrage society, as on their side of that argument. This second conversion of St. Paul impresses one as even more remarkable than his first. It took an "angel of God" to show him the error of his ways in Ephesus, but one little Baptist preacher did it this time—all by himself. Truly St. Paul is getting easier to deal with than he used to be.

But to resume, Maine, in tracing the amalgamation of the later Roman (Pagan) law with the archaic laws of a lower civilization (the result of which was Christian law), shows that the Church, while it chose the Roman laws, which had arrived at so high a state, for others, retained for women, and particularly for wives, the least favorable of the Roman, eked out with the archaic Patria Potestas and the more degrading provisions of the earlier civilizations. Maine reluctantly says that the jurisconsults of the day contended for better laws for wives, but that the Church prevailed in most instances, and established the more oppressive ones.

With certain of these laws—the worst ones—I cannot deal here for obvious reasons; but a few of them I may be permitted to give without offence to the modesty of any one.