[30] Seals upon legal papers owe their origin to the custom of the uneducated noble warrior stamping the imprint of his clenched or mailed hand upon wax as his signature.
[31] St. Theresa founded the Barefoot Carmelites, and it is but a few years since thousands of its members assembled to do honor to her name.
[32] The annals of the Church of Rome give us the history of that celebrated prostitute Marozia of the tenth century, who lived in public concubinage with Pope Sergius III., whom she had raised to the papal throne. Afterwards she and her sister Theodosia placed another of their lovers, under name of Anastatius III., and after him John X., in the same position. Still later this same powerful Marozia placed the tiara upon the head of her son by Pope Sergius under name of John XI., and this before he was sixteen years of age. The celebrated Countess Matilda exerted no less power over popedom, while within this century the maid of Kent has issued orders to the pope himself.
[33] The first abbess, Petrouville, becoming involved in a dispute with the powerful bishop of Angers, summoned him before the council of Chateraroux and Poicters, where she pleaded the cause of her order and won her case. In 1349 the abbess Theophegenie denied the right of the seneschal of Poitou to judge the monks of Fontervault, and gained it for herself. In 1500, Mary of Brittany, in concert with the pope’s deputies, drew up with an unfaltering hand the new statutes of the order. Legouve.—Moral History of Women.
[34] No community was richer or more influential, yet during six hundred years and under thirty-two abbesses, every one of its privileges were attacked by masculine pride or violence, and every one maintained by the vigor of the women.—Sketches of Fontervault.
[35] What is more remarkable the monks of this convent were under control of the abbess and nuns, receiving their food as alms.—Ibid.
[36] “The Lord’s Prayer,” taught his disciples by Jesus, recognizes the loss, and demands restoration of the feminine in “Hallowed (whole) be Thy Name.”
[37] Woman should always be clothed in mourning and rags, that the eye may perceive in her only a penitent, drowned to tears, and so doing for the sin of having ruined the whole human race. Woman is the gateway of satan, who broke the seal of the forbidden tree and who first violated the divine law.
[38] Gildas, in the first half of the sixth century, declared the clergy were utterly corrupt. Lea.—Studies in Church History.
[39] In the third century marriage was permitted to all ranks and orders of the clergy. Those, however, who continued in a state of celibacy, obtained by this abstinence a higher reputation of sanctity and virtue than others. This was owing to the almost general persuasion that they who took wives were of all others the most subject to the influence of malignant demons.—Mosheim. As early as the third century, says Bayle, were several maidens who resolved never to marry.