CHAPTER II.
EXPLANATION OF THE DEGRADATION.
From a very early date two currents can be traced in the Church—one in the direction of upholding marriage, another in that of despising and rejecting it. No one with the New Testament as his guide could venture to assert that marriage was wrong, and the tradition remained firm in the Church during the Ante-Nicene period that it was unlawful and heretical to forbid marriage. The Apostolic Fathers[138] offer exhortations to wives to love their own husbands truly, and to love all others with no partiality for any one and in all chastity, and to train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God. As time moves on, such exhortations become less frequent, but still marriage is held up as a modified blessing. Tertullian,[139] whose words in an opposite direction are very strong and numerous, has this passage, “Whence are we to find language adequate to describe the happiness of that marriage which the Church cements and the oblation confirms, and the benediction signs and seals, which angels report and the Father holds as ratified?” And then he describes the joys of the couple: “Together they pray, together prostrate themselves, together perform their fasts, mutually teaching, mutually exhorting, mutually sustaining.” But Tertullian, it has to be noticed, is not here insisting on the blessings of marriage, but on the blessedness of a marriage between two believers celebrated in the face of the Church, in contrast with a marriage between a believer and an unbeliever not sanctioned by the Church. The duties of the wife were simple: She had to obey her husband, for he was her head, her lord and superior; she was to fear him, reverence him, and please him alone; she had to cultivate silence; she had to spin and take care of the house, and she ought to stay at home and attend to her children. The only occasions for her going out were when she went to church, or with her husband to visit a sick brother.[140]
The other current of thought which I mentioned ran against marriage, and it was of an ascetic nature. The seeds of it occur in the ‘Republic’ of Plato, and it attached itself to the Pauline conception of flesh. I can explain it best by a reference to food. We take food in order to sustain the body. But various kinds of dainties please the palate, and we may take the food not merely for health, but for the pleasure that it gives. In the first instance we are acting rightly and under an irresistible necessity. In the second instance we are sinning, for we are yielding to a base appetite, the outcome of the flesh. The flesh, its appetites and passions, are the sources of human corruption, and gratification of the flesh is a sin. In like manner the sole object of marriage is that children may be born, and if any other object is sought, it is a gratification of lust; and, therefore, while marriage is allowable, man may be nearly as licentious in marriage as out of it. These inferences are drawn with the utmost precision by Christian writers of the second and third centuries, and the opinions I have mentioned will be found expressed in numerous passages. But it is easy to see that the mind could not halt in this position. Marriage, even for the sake of children, was a carnal indulgence, and such thinkers could not help feeling that the arrangement of the Creator was not altogether satisfactory. They did not venture on saying this. They did not dare to condemn marriage. But they held that it was much better not to marry at all, that the man or woman who had never married was a nobler and more exalted being than the man or woman who had married. Of course these ideas did not spring into vogue at once, but gradually forced their way. They were aided by the increasing rigour in the distinction between clerical and lay. The clerical man must possess a peculiar sanctity. A man who aspired to a clerical office in the church must, above all, show control over the lusts and passions of earth, and so refrain from marriage. The lay brother might be unable to free himself from the trammels of earth; the cleric could rise to the throne of heaven only on the wings of virginity. There thus arose a gradation of merit which had its counterpart in the evolution of the world’s history. “For the world,” says Methodius,[141] “while still unfilled with men, was like a child, and it was necessary that it should first be filled with these, and so grow to manhood. But when hereafter it was colonized from end to end, the race of man spreading to a boundless extent, God no longer allowed man to remain in the same ways, considering how they might now proceed from one point to another and advance nearer to heaven until, having attained to the very greatest and most exalted lesson of virginity, they should reach to perfection, that first they should abandon the intermarriage of brothers and sisters and marry wives from other families, and then that they no longer should have many wives, like brute beasts, as though born for the mere propagation of the species, and then that they should not be adulterers, and then that they should go on to continence, and from continence to virginity, when having trained themselves to despise the flesh, they sail fearlessly into the peaceful haven of immortality.” Marriage, according to this writer, was not abolished by Christ, but it was a state of inferiority. “For I think,” he makes a virgin say, “I have gathered clearly from the Scriptures that after the Word had brought in virginity, He did not altogether abolish the generation of children; for though the moon may be greater than the stars, the light of the other stars is not destroyed by the moonlight.” There thus arose the gradation of virgins, widows, and wives. Tertullian[142] speaks of wives as women of the second degree of modesty who have fallen into wedlock.
The current of thought which I have exhibited displays itself, first of all, in the condemnation of second marriages. The Apostle Paul permitted these, and the Church could not forbid them. In the Pastor of Hermas they are not condemned, but Athenagoras[143] raises his voice against them. “He who deprives himself,” he says, “of his first wife, even though she be dead, is a cloaked adulterer.” The argument used against them was that God made husband and wife one flesh, and one flesh they remained, even after the death of one of them. If they were one flesh, how could a second woman be added to them? She could not become one flesh. Tertullian,[144] diverging from the Catholic to the Montanistic faith, maintained that a second marriage was equal to a marriage with two wives at one time, and therefore forbidden. But whatever their arguments were, at the root of the opinion lay the ascetic tendency of thought. This is seen in Tertullian[145], who wrote a treatise addressed to his wife, admonishing her not to marry again if he died first. In speaking of the resurrection he says to her: “There will at that day be no resumption of voluptuous disgrace between us”; and in another treatise he remarks: “Let us ponder over our consciousness itself to see how different a man feels himself when he chances to be deprived of his wife. He savours spiritually.”[146]
Tertullian, for his age, is exceptional in the strength of his denunciations, and the Church so far adhered to the Apostolic permission as to allow laymen to marry twice.
This antagonism to marriage had a great influence on family life. It is strange how seldom children are mentioned in the Christian writings of the second and third centuries. Almost nothing is said of their training; no efforts are mentioned as being made for their instruction. The Christians had come to the belief that the world had enough of children, and was fully stocked, and that every birth was a cause of sorrow and not of joy. One writer[147] interprets the wail of the infant as he enters the world thus: “Why, O mother, didst thou bring me forth to this life, in which prolongation of life is progress to death? Why hast thou brought me into this troubled world, in which, on being born, swaddling bands are my first experience? Why hast thou delivered me to such a life as this, in which a pitiable youth wastes away before old age, and old age is shunned as under the doom of death? Dreadful, O mother, is the course of life which has death as the goal of the runner. Bitter is the road of life we travel, with the grave as the wayfarer’s inn.” Tertullian[148] says: “Further reasons for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is idle. For why should we be eager to bear children, whom, when we have them, we desire to send before us to glory (in respect, I mean, of the distresses that are now imminent); desirous as we are ourselves to be taken out of this most wicked world and received into the Lord’s presence.” He describes children as “burdens which are to us most of all unsuitable, as being perilous to faith.” And again: “Let the well-known burdensomeness of children, especially in our case, suffice to counsel widowhood—children whom men are compelled by laws to have, because no wise man would ever willingly have desired sons.” And he exclaims,[149] “A Christian forsooth will seek heirs, disinherited as he is from the entire world.”
Such ideas had necessarily a very powerful effect on the place and position of woman and on the conception of her nature. What was that effect? I will attempt to describe it in a few words. I may define man to be a male human being, and woman to be a female human being. They are both human beings, both gifted with reason and conscience, both responsible for their actions, both entitled to the freedom essential to this responsibility, and both capable of the noblest thoughts and deeds. As human beings they are on an equality as to their powers, the differences in individuals resulting from the surroundings and circumstances of spiritual growth. But man is a male and woman is a female, and this distinction exists in Nature for the continuance of the race. Now what the early Christians did was to strike the male out of the definition of man, and human being out of the definition of woman. Man was a human being made for the highest and noblest purposes; woman was a female made to serve only one. She was on the earth to inflame the heart of man with every evil passion. She was a fire-ship continually striving to get alongside the male man-of-war to blow him up into pieces. This is the way in which Tertullian[150] addresses women: “Do you not know that each one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.” And the gentle Clement of Alexandria[151] hits her hard when he says: “Nothing disgraceful is proper for man, who is endowed with reason; much less for woman, to whom it brings shame even to reflect of what nature she is.” Gregory Thaumaturgus[152] asserts: “Moreover, among all women I sought for chastity proper to them, and I found it in none. And verily, a person may find one man chaste among a thousand, but a woman never.” The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs[153] makes a similar statement, and adds: “By means of their adornment they deceive first the minds of men, and they instil poison by the glance of their eye, and then they take them captive by their doings,” and therefore “men should guard their senses against every woman.” “The angel of God showed me,” it says in another passage, “that for ever do women bear rule over king and beggar alike; and from the king they take away his glory, and from the valiant man his strength, and from the beggar even that little which is the stay of his poverty.”[154]
How, then, were men to treat this frivolous, dress-loving, lust-inspiring creature? Surely the best plan was to shut her up. Her clear duty was to stay at home, and not let herself be seen anywhere. And this duty the Christian writers impress upon her again and again. She is not to go to banquets, where her looks are sure to create evil thoughts in the minds of men who are drinking largely of wine. She is not to go to marriage feasts, where the talk and the songs may border on licentiousness. Of course, she is not to wander about the streets in search of sights, nor to frequent the theatre, nor the public baths, nor the spectacles. Does she want exercise? Clement of Alexandria prescribes for her:[155] “She is to exercise herself in spinning and weaving, and superintending the cooking, if necessary.” He adds: “Women are with their own hand to fetch from the store what we require; and it is no disgrace for them to apply themselves to the mill. Nor is it a reproach to a wife—housekeeper and helpmeet—to occupy herself in cooking, so that it may be palatable to her husband. And if she shake up the couch, reach drink to her husband when thirsty, set food on the table as neatly as possible, and so give herself exercise tending to sound health, the Instructor will approve of a woman like this.” During the only occasions on which she may quit her own house—namely, when visiting the sick or going to church—she must be veiled; not a portion of her face must be seen, and when she is in church she must remain covered. These are the injunctions which occur repeatedly in the Christian writers. Voices were raised against this ascetic treatment, among them that of one Bishop of Rome,[156] but they were drowned in the current of invectives that were directed against woman’s love of dress and finery and show. These invectives and discussions on the dress of women and veiling of virgins are numerous. Tertullian, Cyprian, Clement of Alexandria, Commodian, and the Apostolic Constitutions deal minutely with the subject—all on the idea that woman is a most inflammatory being. Is a woman beautiful? “Natural grace,” says Tertullian,[157] “must be obliterated by concealment and negligence, as being dangerous to the glances of the beholder’s eyes.” Then she must clothe herself from head to foot. In speaking of her going to church, Clement of Alexandria says: “Let her be entirely covered, unless she happen to be at home. For that style of dress is grave, and protects from being gazed at. And she will never fall who puts before her face modesty and her shawl; nor will she invite another to fall into sin by uncovering her face. For this is the wish of the Word, since it is becoming for her to pray veiled.”[158]
Then she must not adorn herself in any way. “It is not right in God,” says Commodian,[159] “that a faithful Christian woman should be adorned.” The purpose of clothing is to defend the body against excess of cold and intensity of heat, and the simplest materials are sufficient for this purpose. The Christian woman must therefore bid farewell to embroidery of gold and Indian silks; she is strictly forbidden to wear gold ornaments of any kind, and she is to avoid all dyed clothes, as the dye is unnecessary for health, afflicts greedy eyes, and, moreover, it is false; for God would have made the sheep purple if He had wished the woollen clothes to be purple. Strong condemnation is uttered against any attempt to trick out the person. “Head-dresses,” says Clement[160] of Alexandria, “and varieties of head-dresses, and elaborate braidings, and infinite modes of dressing the hair, and costly mirrors in which they arrange their costume, are characteristic of women who have lost all shame.” And if the adornment of the natural body is thus condemned, the endless variety of artificial contrivances employed by the Roman and Greek ladies is necessarily considered abominable. In regard to the hair, Cyprian[161] addresses virgins thus: “Are sincerity and truth preserved when what is sincere is polluted by adulterous colours, and what is true is changed into a lie by the deceitful dyes of medicaments? Your Lord says, ‘Thou canst not make one hair black or white,’ and you, in order to overcome the word of your Lord, will be more mighty than He, and stain your hair with a daring endeavour and with profane contempt; with evil presage of the future, make a beginning to yourself already of flame-coloured hair.” And he uses equally strong expressions in regard to tinting the eyes, “You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him, you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the serpent. As you are adorned in the fashion of your enemy, with him also you shall burn by-and-by.” And he thus sums up the exhortations which he addresses to the virgins: “Let your countenance remain in you incorrupt, your neck unadorned, your figure simple; let not wounds be made in your ears, nor let the precious chain of bracelets and necklaces circle your arms or your neck; let your feet be free from golden bands, your hair stained with no dye, your eyes worthy of beholding God.” Notwithstanding all the exhortations which were showered upon the wives and virgins, the Christian writings prove that human nature often had its own way. Both Clement and Cyprian tell dreadful stories of some of the virgins, and in the treatise of Cyprian from which I have quoted there are lamentations like this: “For this reason, therefore, the Church frequently mourns over her virgins; hence she groans at their scandalous and detestable stories; hence the flower of her virgins is extinguished, the honour and modesty of continency are injured, and all its glory and dignity are profaned.” At the same time we ought to do justice to the self-control and perseverance with which many pursued their high ideal—for the ideal was a high one, as the purity aimed at was not corporeal merely, but extended over the whole range of life. “For it would be ridiculous,” says one of the virgins in Methodius, “to preserve the lustful members pure but not the tongue, or to preserve the tongue but neither the eyesight, the ears, nor the hands, or, lastly, to preserve these pure but not the mind, defiling it with pride and anger.”[162]