Life, all-glowing.
Thus at time's humming loom 't is my hand prepares
The garment of life which the Deity wears."
CHAPTER XII
WOMEN OF RUSSIA
In the dawn of recorded history woman on the great plains of eastern Europe shared the lot of her western sisters. She was purchased into her husband's family or carried away, she was sometimes only one of his many wives, she took care of the household and helped him in the field, participated in his manly sports, accompanied him in his military expeditions, enjoyed full social freedom, was treated with respect, ruled the state, and was sometimes burned on the funeral pyre with her husband's body.
Russian annals have preserved for us a picture of one of the most wholesome women of early, heathen Russia Princess Olga Igor. The Prince of Kief, Olga's husband, lost his life while collecting tribute on the upper Dnieper and left her a widow with a child in her arms. She avenged her husband's death on his slayers in true heathen fashion. She destroyed their ambassadors by burying alive some of them and burning others. She besieged their capital, took it, and laid a heavy tribute on them. Having thus performed her last duty toward her husband, Olga, as princess regent, travelled over all her country and made every effort to introduce a good system of government.
She defined the amount of taxes to be paid by the different provinces, left her fiscal agents behind her, and established courts of justice. Before her death Olga visited Constantinople and returned home a Christian.
To the deep respect for Olga's wisdom a Russian annalist ascribes a preponderating influence in the introduction of Christianity into Russia from the Byzantine Empire rather than from Rome. The Christian clergy immediately began a struggle against polygamy, deeply rooted in the early Russian society, and endeavored to prevent the excess of parental authority in the arrangement of marriages against their children's wishes. Valuable civil rights were secured for women, such as the right to inherit property and to bequeath it to their children at pleasure. But together with the praiseworthy efforts of the clergy in regard to women, there came, too, an undesirable influence. The Greek priests, full of holy zeal, considered it their sacred duty to combat idolatry in all its forms, and proscribed all ancient religious and semi-religious observances as unholy and coming from the evil one, who deluded the simple-minded and the uncautious into sinful practices and thus led them to eternal damnation. The clergy put an end to many games and pastimes, which formerly brought together persons of both sexes, and little by little the church removed woman from male society. To eastern as well as to western monks of ascetic aspirations woman was a source of evil, and therefore had to be kept out of man's way.