Canonical Law declares: “Only man was created in the image of God, not woman; therefore, woman should serve him and be his maid!”
The Provincial Council of Macon, in the sixth century, earnestly debated the question whether woman had a soul.
The effect of these ideas in the Church on the peoples embracing Christianity was direct. Among the Germans, after the acceptance of the new faith, for the foregoing reason, the weregild for a wife—the simple expression of her value—decreased (J. Falke, “Die ritterliche Gesellschaft,” p. 49. Berlin, 1862). Concerning the value of each sex among the Jews, vide Leviticus, xxvii, 3 and 4.
Moreover, polygamy, which is expressly recognized in the Old Testament (Deut. xxi, 15), is nowhere explicitly interdicted in the New Testament. Christian princes (e.g., the Marovingian kings, Clotar I, Childebert I, Pepin I, and many of the royal Franks) lived in polygamy; and at that time the Church made no opposition to it (Weinhold, “Die deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter,” ii, p. 15). Comp. also Unger, “Die Ehe,” etc., and the excellent work by Louis Bridel, “La femme et le droit,” Paris, 1884.
[10]. Comp. Friedländer “Sittengeschichte Roms.” Wiedemeister, “Der Cäsarenwahnsinn.” Suetonius. Moreau, “Des aberrations du sens génésique.”
[11]. These statements, however, are opposed to Friedreich (“Hdb. d. gerichtsärztl Praxis,” i, p. 271, 1843), and also Lombroso (op. cit., p. 42), according to whom pederasty is very frequent among the uncivilized Americans.
[12]. Comp. Friedreich, “gerichtl. Psychologie,” p. 389, who has collected numerous examples. Thus the nun Blanbekin was always troubled with the thought about what had become of the part lost at the circumcision of Christ. Veronica Juliani, canonized by Pope Pius II, in memory of the divine lion, took an actual lion in her bed and kissed it, and let it suck from her breast; and even secreted a few drops of milk for it. St. Catherine, of Genoa, often burned with such inward fire that, in order to cool herself, she would lie down on the ground and cry “Love, love, I can endure it no longer!” At the same time she felt a peculiar inclination for her confessor. One day she lifted his hand to her nose and smelled an odor which penetrated to her heart, “a heavenly perfume, so delightful that it would wake the dead.” St. Armelle and St. Elizabeth were troubled with a similar longing for the child Jesus. The temptations of St. Anthony, of Padua, are well known. An old prayer is significant: “O, that I had found thee, Holy Emanuel; O, that I had thee in my bed to bring delight to body and soul. Come and be mine, and my heart shall be thy resting-place.”
[13]. Comp. Friedreich, “Diagnostik der psych. Krankheiten,” p. 347 u. ff.; Neumann, “Lehrb. d. Psychiatrie,” p. 80.
[14]. The relation of this trio finds its expression not only in the events of real life, as above indicated, but also in romance, and even in the sculpture of degenerate eras. As an example we may point to the group of St. Theresa, by Bernini, who “sinks in an hysterical faint on a marble cloud, with an amorous angel plunging the arrow (of divine love) into her heart” (Lübke).
[15]. A Russian religious sect.