Chapter V: The Position of Women (9)

760 St. Augustine (_De Conj. Adult._ ii. 19) maintains that adultery is
even more criminal in the man than in the woman. St. Jerome has an
impressive passage on the subject: “Aliæ sunt leges Cæsarum, aliæ
Christi; aliud Papianus, aliud Paulus nostri præcepit. Apud illos
viris impudicitiæ fræna laxantur et solo stupro atque adulterio
condemnato passim per lupanaria et ancillulas libido permittitur,
quasi culpam dignitas faciat non voluntas. Apud nos quod non licet
feminis æque non licet viris; et eadem servitus pari conditione
censetur.”—_Ep._ lxxvii. St. Chrysostom writes in a similar strain.

761 See Troplong, _Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit_, pp.
239-251.

762 We find, however, traces of a toleration of the Roman type of
concubine in Christianity for some time. Thus, a Council of Toledo
decreed: “Si quis habens uxorem fidelis concubinam habeat non
communicet. Cæterum is qui non habet uxorem et pro uxore concubinam
habet a communione non repellatur, tantum ut unius mulieris, aut
uxoris aut concubinæ ut ei placuerit, sit conjunctione contentus.”—1
_Can._ 17. St. Isidore said: “Christiano non dicam plurimas sed nec
duas simul habere licitum est, nisi unam tantum aut uxorem, aut
certo loco uxoris, si conjux deest, concubinam.”—_Apud Gratianum_,
diss. 4. Quoted by Natalis Alexander, _Hist. Eccles._ Sæc. I. diss.
29. Mr. Lea (_Hist. of Sacerdotal Celibacy_, pp. 203-205) has
devoted an extremely interesting note to tracing the history of the
word concubine through the middle ages. He shows that even up to the
thirteenth century a concubine was not necessarily an abandoned
woman. The term was applied to marriages that were real, but not
officially recognised. Coleridge notices a remarkable instance of
the revival of this custom in German history.—_Notes on English
Divines_ (ed. 1853), vol. i. p. 221.

763 Legouvé, p. 199.

764 See some curious passages in Troplong, pp. 222-223. The Fathers seem
to have thought dissolution of marriage was not lawful on account of
the adultery of the husband, but that it was not absolutely
unlawful, though not commendable, for a husband whose wife had
committed adultery to re-marry.

765 Some of the great charities of Fabiola were performed as penances,
on account of her crime in availing herself of the legislative
permission of divorce.

766 Laboulaye, _Recherches sur la Condition civile et politique des
Femmes_, pp. 152-158.

767 “A discourse concerning the obligation to marry within the true
communion, following from their style (_sic_) of being called a holy
seed.” This rare discourse is appended to a sermon against mixed
marriages by Leslie. (London, 1702.) The reader may find something
about Dodwell in Macaulay’s _Hist. of England_, ch. xiv.; but
Macaulay, who does not appear to have known Dodwell’s
masterpiece—his dissertation _De Paucitate Marturum_, which is one
of the finest specimens of criticism of his time—and who only knew
the discourse on marriages by extracts, has, I think, done him
considerable injustice.

768 Dodwell relies mainly upon this fact, and especially upon Ezra’s
having treated these marriages as essentially null.

769 “Jungere cum infidelibus vinculum matrimonii, prostituere gentilibus
membra Christi.”—Cyprian, _De Lapsis_.

770 “Hæc cum ita sint, fideles Gentilium matrimonia subeuntes stupri
reos esse constat, et arcendos ab omni communicatione
fraternitatis.”—Tert. _Ad Uxor._ ii. 3.

771 See on this law, and on the many councils which condemned the
marriage of orthodox with heretics, Bingham, _Antiq._ xxii. 2, §§
1-2.

772 Many curious statistics illustrating this fact are given by M.
Bonneville de Marsangy—a Portuguese writer who was counsellor of the
Imperial Court at Paris—in his _Étude sur la Moralité comparée de la
Femme et de l’Homme_. (Paris, 1862.) The writer would have done
better if he had not maintained, in lawyer fashion, that the
statistics of crime are absolutely decisive on the question of the
comparative morality of the sexes, and also, if he had not thought
it due to his official position to talk in a rather grotesque strain
about the regeneration and glorification of the sex in the person of
the Empress Eugénie.

773 See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ xxxiv. 19.

774 “Tantum inter Stoicos, Serene, et ceteros sapientiam professos
interesse, quantum inter fœminas et mares non immerito dixerim.”—_De
Const. Sapientis_, cap. i.

775 This is well illustrated, on the one side, by the most repulsive
representations of Christ, by Michael Angelo, in the great fresco in
the Sistine Chapel (so inferior to the Christ of Orgagna, at Pisa,
from which it was partly imitated), and in marble in the Minerva
Church at Rome; and, on the other side, by the frescoes of Perugino,
at Perugia, representing the great sages of Paganism. The figure of
Cato, in the latter, almost approaches, as well as I remember, the
type of St. John.

776 In that fine description of a virtuous woman which is ascribed to
the mother of King Lemuel, we read: “She stretcheth out her hand to
the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.” (Proverbs
xxxi. 20.) I have already quoted from Xenophon the beautiful
description of the Greek wife tending her sick slaves. So, too,
Euripides represents the slaves of Alcestis gathering with tears
around the bed of their dying mistress, who, even then, found some
kind word for each, and, when she died, lamenting her as their
second mother. (Eurip. _Alcest._) In the servile war which desolated
Sicily at the time of the Punic wars, we find a touching trait of
the same kind. The revolt was provoked by the cruelties of a rich
man, named Damophilus, and his wife, who were massacred with
circumstances of great atrocity; but the slaves preserved their
daughter entirely unharmed, for she had always made it her business
to console them in their sorrow, and she had won the love of all.
(Diodor. Sic. _Frag._ xxxiv.) So, too, Marcia, the wife of Cato,
used to suckle her young slaves from her breast. (Plut. _Marc.
Cato_.) I may add the well-known sentiment which Virgil puts in the
mouth of Dido: “Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.” There
are, doubtless, many other touches of the same kind in ancient
literature, some of which may occur to my readers.

777 Theodoret, v. 19.

778 See the beautiful description of the functions of a Christian woman
in the second book of Tertullian, _Ad Uxorem_.

779 See, upon the deaconesses, Bingham’s _Christian Antiquities_, book
ii. ch. 22, and Ludlow’s _Woman’s Work in the Church_. The latter
author argues elaborately that the “widows” were not the same as the
deaconesses.

780 Phœbe (Rom. xvi. 1) is described as a διάκονος.

781 A very able writer, who takes on the whole an unfavourable view of
the influence of Christianity on legislation, says: “The provision
for the widow was attributable to the exertions of the Church, which
never relaxed its solicitude for the interests of wives surviving
their husbands, winning, perhaps, one of the most arduous of its
triumphs when, after exacting for two or three centuries an express
promise from the husband at marriage to endow his wife, it at last
succeeded in engrafting the principle of dower on the customary law
of all Western Europe.”—Maine’s _Ancient Law_, p. 224.

782 See Troplong, _Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit_, pp.
308-310.

783 The results of this change have been treated by Miss Parkes in her
truly admirable little book called _Essays on Woman’s Work_, better
than by any other writer with whom I am acquainted.