[20] The Talmud (Mishna), declared three cleansings were necessary for leprosy and three for children, thus placing the bringing of an immortal being into life upon the same plane of defilement with the most hideous plague of antiquity.
[21] The mean term of life for these wretched girls under religious confinement in a nunnery was about ten years. From the fifteenth century a sickness was common, known as Disease of the Cloisters. It was described by Carmen. Jewish contempt of the feminine was not alone exhibited in prohibiting her entrance into the holy places of the temple, and in the ceremonies of her purification, but also in the especial holiness of male animals which alone were used for sacrifice. Under Jewish law the sons alone inherited, the elder receiving a double portion as the beginning of his father’s strength. See Deut. 21-15. If perchance the mother also possessed an inheritance that was also divided among the sons to the exclusion of daughters. The modern English law of primogeniture is traceable to Judaism. Even the commandments were made subservient to masculine ideas, the tenth classing a man’s wife with his cattle and slaves, while the penalties of the seventh were usually visited upon her alone.
[22] The reign of Constantine marks the epoch of the transformation of Christianity from a religious into a political system. Draper.—Conflict of Religion and Science.
[23] “The woman that cometh to give thanks must offer accustomed offering in this kingdom; it is the law of the kingdom in such cases.”
[24] In the year 1867 the Right Rev. Bishop Coxe, of the Western Diocese of New York, refused the sacrament to those women patients of Dr. Foster’s Sanitarium at Clifton Springs, N.Y., whose heads were uncovered, although the rite was performed in the domestic chapel of that institution and under the same roof as the patient’s own rooms. During the famous See trial at Newark, N.J., 1876, the prosecutor, Rev. Dr. Craven, declared that every woman before him wore her head covered in token of her subordination.
[25] The Catholic Congress of July, 1892, telegraphing the pope it would strive to obtain for the Holy See the recovery of its inalienable prerogative and territorial independence, was convened at Fulda.
[26] “In the old days, no woman was allowed to put her foot within the walls of the monastery at San Augustin, Mexico. A noble lady of Spain, wife of the reigning Viceroy, was bent on visiting it. Nothing could stop her, and in she came. But she found only empty cloisters, for each virtuous monk locked himself securely in his cell, and afterward every stone in the floor which her sacrilegious feet had touched was carefully replaced by a new one fresh from the mountain top. Times are sadly changed. The house has now been turned into a hotel.”
[27] Sacerdotal Celibacy.—Lea.
[28] Studies in Church History.—Lea.
[29] History of Materialism.