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Title: Woman, Church & State

Author: Matilda Joslyn Gage

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN,
CHURCH & STATE ***

The
WOMAN, Original Exposé
CHURCH of Male
& STATE Collaboration

Against
the Female Sex

by Matilda Joslyn Gage

Original publication date 1893

Contents

Preface 5
Chapter One—The Matriarchate
Tendency of Christianity from the first to restrict woman’s
liberty. Woman had great freedom under the old civilizations.
The Matriarchate; its traces among many nations; it preceded
the Patriarchate. The Iroquois or Six Nations under
reminiscences of the Matriarchate. Government of the United
States borrowed from the Six Nations. To the Matriarchate or
Mother-rule, is the world indebted for its first conception of
“inherent rights,” and a government established on this basis.
Malabar under the Matriarchate when discovered by the
Portuguese. The most ancient Aryans under the Matriarchate.
Ancient Egypt a reminiscence of the Matriarchal period.
Authority of the wife among the most polished nations of
antiquity. As Vestal Virgin in Rome, woman’s authority great
both in civil and religious affairs. Monogamy the rule of the
Matriarchate. Polygamy, infanticide and prostitution the rule of
the Patriarchate. 7

Chapter Two—Celibacy
Original sin. Woman not regarded as a human being by the
church. Marriage looked upon as vile. Celibacy of the clergy;
their degrading sensuality. A double Code of Morals. Celibacy
confirmed as a dogma of the church. Many notable
consequences followed. Wives sold as slaves. Women driven to
suicide. Influence of the church unfavorable to virtue. Women of
wealth drawn into monastic life. The church in Mexico.
President Diaz. Protestant Orders. 24

Chapter Three—Canon Law

The church makes the legitimacy of marriage depend upon its
control of the ceremony. Change from ancient civilization to
renewed barbarism at an early age of the Christian era, noted by
historians, but its cause unperceived. The clergy a distinct body
from the laity; their rights not the same. A holy sex and an
unholy one. Rapid growth of Canon law in England. Alteration
in the laws through the separation of Ecclesiastical courts from
the Civil, recognized by Blackstone as among the remarkable
legal events of Great Britain. Learning prohibited to women.
The oath of seven persons required to convict a priest. Husbands
prohibited by Canon law from leaving more than one-third of
their property to wives; might leave them less. Daughters could
be disinherited; sons could not be. The Reformation effected no
change. Governments catering to Pope Leo XIII, at time of his
Jubilee; the President of the United States sends a gift. 50

Chapter Four—Marquette
Feudalism; its degradation of woman. Jus primae noctis. Rights
of the Lords Spiritual. Peasants decide not to marry. Immorality
of the heads of the Greek and the Protestant churches. Breton
Ballad of the Fourteenth Century. St. Margaret of Scotland. Pall
Mall Gazette’s disclosures. Foreign traffic in young English
girls. West End. Eton. Prostitution chiefly supported by “Heads
of Families.” Northwestern Pineries. Governmental crime-
makers. Rapid increase of child criminals. The White Cross
society. Baptism of nude women in the early Christian Church. 66

Chapter Five—Witchcraft
The possession of a pet of any kind dangerous to woman. Black 94
cats and witches. The fact of a woman’s possessing knowledge,
brought her under suspicion of the church. The three most
distinguishing features of witchcraft. Opposition of the church
to the growth of human will. Persecution for witchcraft a
continuance of church policy for obtaining universal dominion
over mankind. The Sabbat. The Black Mass. Women physicians
and surgeons of the middle ages; they discover anaesthetics.

Their learning; their persecution by the church. The most
eminent legal minds incapable of forming correct judgment.
Three notable points in regard to witchcraft. Persecution
introduced into America by the “Pilgrim Fathers.” First Synod
in America convened to try a woman for heresy. Whipping half
nude women for their religious opinions. Famine caused by
persecution of women.

Chapter Six—Wives
“Usus.” Disruption of the Roman Empire unfavorable to the
personal and proprietary rights of woman. Sale of daughters
practiced in England seven hundred years after the introduction
of Christianity. The Mundium. The practice of buying wives
with cattle or money regulated by law. Evil fame of
Christendom. “The Worthier of Blood.” Murder of a husband
termed petit treason; punished by burning alive. Mrs. Sanio
decapitated in Finland, 1892, for crime of petit treason.
Husbands control wives’ religion. The “Lucy Walker case;”
Judge Dodge decides a husband has a property interest in a wife.
Davenport’s Rules for his wife. Assaulting wives protected by
law. The Ducking Stool; its use in England; brought to America
by the “Pilgrim Fathers.” Salic law. Gavelkind. Women not
permitted to read the Bible. “Masterless women.” Women not
admitted as a surety or witness. The Code Napoleon. Morganatic
marriage. Ibsen’s “Ghosts.” Strindberg’s “Giftas.” Ancient
Slavs. Russia under Greek Christianity. The Domstroii Marriage
forms. Burying wives alive. “Darkest England.” Advertising
wives. An English clergyman offers £100 reward for the capture
and return of his wife. Civil marriage is opposed by the church.
Action of the Chilian Republic. 129

Chapter Seven—Polygamy
Polygamy sustained by the Christian Church and the Christian 175
State. The first Synod of the Reformation convened to sanction
polygamy. Favoring views of Luther and the other “principal
reformers.” Favoring action of the American Board of Foreign

Missions. Favoring action of a Missionary Conference in India.
Mormons compared to the Puritans. Mormon theocracy similar
to that of other Christian sects.

Chapter Eight—Woman and Work
God’s “curse” upon Adam. Opposition of the church to
amelioration of woman’s suffering as an interference with her
“curse.” Man’s escape from his own “curse.” The sufferings of
helpless infants and children because of woman’s labor.
Innutrition and the hard labor of expectant mothers the two great
factors in physical degeneration and infantile mortality.
Woman’s work in Europe and the United States. Woman
degraded under Christian civilization to labors unfit for slaves. 191

Chapter Nine—The Church of Today
Sin killed by sin. Woman’s inferiority taught from the pulpit
today. A Pastoral letter. The See trial. Modern sermons on
women. Lenten lectures of Rev. Morgan A. Dix. The Methodist
General Conference of 1880, reject Miss Oliver’s petition for
ordination on the plea that woman already has all the rights that
are good for her. Resolves itself into a political convention. The
General Conference of 1888, rejects women delegates. The
Catholic Plenary Council of 1884. Mazzini’s prophecy. The
opposition of the church to woman’s education has killed off the
inhabitants of the world with greater rapidity than war, famine
or pestilence. The present forms of religion and governments
essentially masculine. 208

Chapter Ten—Past, Present, Future
The most important struggle in the history of the church. Not
self-sacrifice, but self-development woman’s first duty in life.
The protective spirit; its injury to woman. Christianity of little
value to civilization. Looking backward through history;
looking forward. 237

249
Notes
289
Index

Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1880.

The
WOMAN, Original Exposé
CHURCH of Male
& STATE Against
the Female Sex

by Matilda Joslyn Gage

Copyright 1893
By Matilda Joslyn Gage
This Book is Inscribed to the Memory of my Mother, who was at once
mother, sister, friend:
Dedicated to all Christian women and men, of whatever creed or name
who, bound by Church or State, have not dared to Think for
Themselves:
Addressed to all Persons, who, breaking away from custom and the
usage of ages, dare seek Truth for the sake of Truth. To all such it
will be welcome; to all others aggressive and educational.

Preface
This work explains itself and is given to the world because it is needed.
Tired of the obtuseness of Church and State; indignant at the injustice of
both towards woman; at the wrongs inflicted upon one-half of humanity by
the other half in the name of religion; finding appeal and argument alike
met by the assertion that God designed the subjection of woman, and yet
that her position had been higher under Christianity than ever before:
Continually hearing these statements, and knowing them to be false, I
refuted them in a slight resume of the subject at the annual convention of
the National Woman Suffrage Association, Washington, D.C., 1878.
A wish to see that speech in print, having been expressed, it was allowed to
appear in The National Citizen, a woman suffrage paper I then edited, and
shortly afterwards in “The History of Woman Suffrage,” of which I was
also an editor. The kindly reception given both in the United States and
Europe to that meager chapter of forty pages confirmed my purpose of a
fuller presentation of the subject in book form, and it now appears, the
result of twenty years investigation, in a volume of over five hundred and
fifty pages.
Read it; examine for yourselves; accept or reject from the proof offered, but
do not allow the Church or the State to govern your thought or dictate your
judgment.

Chapter One

The Matriarchate

Woman is told that her present position in society is entirely due to
Christianity; that it is superior to that of her sex at any prior age of the
world, Church and State both maintaining that she has ever been inferior
and dependent, man superior and ruler. These assertions are made the basis
of opposition to her demands for exact equality with man in all the relations
of life, although they are not true either of the family, the church, or the
state. Such assertions are due to non-acquaintance with the existing phase
of historical knowledge, whose records the majority of mankind have
neither time nor opportunity of investigating.
Christianity tended somewhat from its foundation to restrict the liberty
woman enjoyed under the old civilizations. Knowing that the position of
every human being keeps pace with the religion and civilization of his
country, and that in many ancient nations woman possessed a much greater
degree of respect and power than she has at the present age, this subject will
be presented from a historical standpoint. If in so doing it helps to show
man’s unwarranted usurpation over woman’s religious and civil rights, and
the very great difference between true religion and theology, this book will
not have been written in vain, as it will prove that the most grievous wrong
ever inflicted upon woman has been in the Christian teaching that she was
not created equal with man, and the consequent denial of her rightful place
in Church and State.
The last half century has shown great advance in historical knowledge;
libraries and manuscripts long inaccessible have been opened to scholars,
and the spirit of investigation has made known many secrets of the past,
brought many hidden things to light. Buried cities have been explored and
forced to reveal their secrets; lost modes of writing have been deciphered,
and olden myths placed upon historic foundations. India is opening her
stores of ancient literature; Egypt, so wise and so famous, of which it was

anciently said: “If it does not find a man mad it leaves him mad,” has
revealed her secrets; hieroglyph-inscribed temples, obelisks and tombs have
been interpreted; papyri buried 4,000 and more years in the folds of
bandage-enveloped mummies have given their secrets to the world. The
brick libraries of Assyria have been unearthed, and the lost civilization of
Babylonia and Chaldea imparted to mankind. The strange Zunis have found
an interpreter; the ancient Aztec language its Champollion, and the
mysteries of even our western continent are becoming unveiled. Darkest
Africa has opened to the light; the colossal images of Easter Island hint at
their origin; while the new science of philology unfolds to us the history of
peoples so completely lost that no other monument of their past remains.
We are now informed as to the condition of early peoples, their laws,
customs, habits, religion, comprising order and rank in the state, the rules of
descent, name, property, the circumstances of family life, the position of
mother, father, children, their temples and priestly orders; all these have
been investigated and a new historic basis has been discovered. Never has
research been so thorough or long-lost knowledge so fully given to the
world.
These records prove that woman had acquired great liberty under the old
civilizations. A form of society existed at an early age known as the
Matriarchate or Mother-rule. Under the Matriarchate, except as son and
inferior, man was not recognized in either of these great institutions, family,
state or church. A father and husband as such, had no place either in the
social, political or religious scheme; woman was ruler in each. The primal
priest on earth, she was also supreme as goddess in heaven. The earliest
semblance of the family is traceable to the relationship of mother and child
alone. Here the primal idea of the family had birth.[1] The child bore its
mother’s name, tracing its descent from her; her authority over it was
regarded as in accord with nature; the father having no part in the family
remained a wanderer. Long years elapsed before man, as husband and
father, was held in esteem. The son, as child of his mother, ranked the
father, the mother taking precedence over both the father and the son.[2]
Blood relationship through a common mother preceded that of descent
through the father in the development of society.[3] This priority of the
mother touched not alone the family, but controlled the state and indicated
the form of religion. Thus we see that during the Matriarchate, woman

ruled; she was first in the family, the state, religion, the most ancient
records showing that man’s subjection to woman preceded by long ages that
of woman to man. The tribe was united through the mother; social, political
and religious life were all in harmony with the idea of woman as the first
and highest power. The earliest phase of life being dependent upon her, she
was recognized as the primal factor in every relation,[4] man holding no
place but that of dependent.
Every part of the world today gives evidence of the system; reminiscences
of the Matriarchate everywhere abound. Livingstone found African tribes
swearing by the mother and tracing descent through her. Marco Polo
discovered similar customs in his Asiatic voyages, and the same customs
are extant among the Indians of our own continent. Bachofen[5] and
numerous investigators[6] agree in the statement that in the earliest forms of
society, the family, government, and religion, were all under woman’s
control; that in fact society started under woman’s absolute authority and
power.
The second step in family life took place when the father, dropping his own
name, took that of his child. This old and wide-spread custom is still extant
in many portions of the globe; the primitive peoples of Java, Australia and
Madagascar are among those still continuing its practice.[7] By this step the
father allied himself to both mother and child, although still holding an
inferior position to both. The Matriarchal family was now fully established,
descent still running in the female line. Thus, as has been expressed, we
find that woman’s liberty did not begin today nor under modern religions or
forms or government, but that she was in reality the founder of civilization,
and that in the most remote times woman enjoyed superiority of rights in all
the institutions of life.[8] And yet so difficult is it to break away from
educated thought, so slight a hold have historical facts upon the mind when
contrary to pre-conceived ideas, that we find people still expressing the
opinion that man’s place has always been first in government. Even under
those forms of society where woman was undisputed head of the family, its
very existence due to her, descent entirely in the female line, we still hear
assertion that his must have been the controlling political power. But at that
early period to which we trace the formation of the family, it was also the
political unit. And when peoples became aggregated into communities,

when tribal relations were ultimately recognized, woman still held superior
position, and was the controlling power in government, and never was
justice more perfect, never civilization higher than under the Matriarchate.
Historians agree as to the high civilization even today of those nations or
tribes still preserving traces of Matriarchal customs. Even under its most
degenerate form, the family, governmental and religious rights of women
are more fully recognized than under any phase of Christian civilization. In
all the oldest religions, equally with the Semitic cults, the feminine was
recognized as a component and superior part of divinity, goddesses holding
the supreme place. Even at much later periods woman shared equally with
man in the highest priestly offices, and was deified after death. In Egypt,
Neith the Victorious, was worshiped as mother of the gods, and in the
yearly festival held in her honor, every family took part for the time holding
a priestly office. To neglect this duty was deemed an omission of great
irreverence.[9] The most ancient occultism recognized the creative power as
feminine and preceding both gods and men.
Under the Matriarchate, monogamy was the rule; neither polyandry or
promiscuity existed.[10]
For long years after the decline of the Matriarchate we still discover that
among many of the most refined nations, woman still possessed much of
the power that belonged exclusively to her during that early period. Ancient
Egypt, recognized as the wisest nation since the direct historic period,
traced descent even to the throne in the female line. To this reminiscence of
the Matriarchate are we indebted for the story of Moses and his
preservation by an Egyptian princess in direct contravention of the
Pharaoh’s orders, as told by the Bible and Josephus. She not alone
preserved the child’s life but carried him to the king as her son given to her
by the bounty of the river and heir to his throne. As showing woman’s
power in that kingdom, the story is worthy of being farther traced. Josephus
says that to please his daughter, the king took the child in his arms, placing
his crown on the baby head, but the chief priest at that moment entering the
room, in a spirit of prophecy cried aloud, “Oh King; this is the child of
whom I foretold danger; kill him and save the nation,” at the same time
striving to take the babe from the king. But the princess caught him away,
thus setting both kingly and priestly power at defiance, taking this step by
virtue of her greater authority, protecting him until he reached manhood and

causing him to be educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, in a college
under her own control. Nor in the supreme hour of the nation’s peril, when
the king, too old to lead his armies to battle, demanded Moses as heir to the
throne in his place, would she give him up until she had exacted an oath
from her father, the potent Pharaoh, that he meant the youth no harm.
The famous Iroquois Indians, or Six Nations, which at the discovery of
America held sway from the great lakes to the Tombigbee river, from the
Hudson to the Ohio, and of whom it has been said that another century
would have found them master of all tribes to the Gulf of Mexico on the
south, and the Mississippi on the west, showed alike in form of government,
and in social life, reminiscences of the Matriarchate. The line of descent,
feminine, was especially notable in all tribal relations such as the election of
Chiefs, and the Council of Matrons, to which all disputed questions were
referred for final adjudication. No sale of lands was valid without consent
of the squaws and among the State Archives at Albany, New York, treaties
are preserved signed by the “Sachems and Principal Women of the Six
Nations.”[11] The women also possessed the veto power on questions of
war. Sir William Johnston mentions an instance of Mohawk squaws
forbidding the war-path to young braves. The family relation among the
Iroquois demonstrated woman’s superiority in power. When an Indian
husband brought the products of the chase to the wigwam, his control over
it ceased. In the home, the wife was absolute; the sale of the skins was
regulated by her, the price was paid to her. If for any cause the Iroquois
husband and wife separated, the wife took with her all the property she had
brought into the wigwam; the children also accompanied the mother, whose
right to them was recognized as supreme. So fully to this day is descent
reckoned through the mother, that blue-eyed, fair-haired children of white
fathers are numbered in the tribe and receive both from state and nation
their portion of the yearly dole paid to Indian tribes. The veriest pagan
among the Iroquois, the renowned and important Keeper of the Wampum,
and present sole interpreter of the Belts which give the most ancient and
secret history of this confederation, is Ephraim Webster, descended from a
white man, who, a hundred or more years since, became affiliated through
marriage with an Indian woman, as a member of the principal nation of the
Iroquois, the Onondagas. As of yore, so now, the greater and lesser Council
Houses of the Iroquois are upon the “mountain” of the Onondaga

reservation a few miles from the city of Syracuse, New York. Not alone the
Iroquois but most Indians of North America trace descent in the female line;
among some tribes woman enjoys almost the whole legislative authority
and in others a prominent share.[12] Lafitte and other Jesuit missionary
writers are corroborated in this statement by Schoolcraft, Catlin, Clark,
Hubert Bancroft of the Pacific coast, and many students of Indian life and
customs. But the most notable fact connected with woman’s participation in
governmental affairs among the Iroquois is the statement of Hon. George
Bancroft that the form of government of the United States, was borrowed
from that of the Six Nations.[13] Thus to the Matriarchate or Mother-rule is
the modern world indebted for its first conception of inherent rights, natural
equality of condition, and the establishment of a civilized government upon
this basis. Although the reputation of the Iroquois as warriors appears most
prominent in history, we nevertheless find their real principles to have been
the true Matriarchal one of peace and industry. Driven from the northern
portion of America by vindictive foes, compelled to take up arms in self-
protection, yet the more peaceful occupations of hunting and agriculture
were continually followed. Their history was preserved by means of
wampum, while under their women the science of government reached the
highest form known to the world. Among the Zunis of New Mexico,
woman still preserves supreme religious and political authority; the
Paramount Council consisting of six priests under control of a supreme
priestess who is the most important functionary of the tribe.[14] This form of
government is traceable to their earliest civilization at which period their
cities were grouped in sevens, six of them constructed upon a uniform plan;
the supreme seventh containing six temples clustered about a supreme
central seventh temple. While male priests ruled over the six primal cities
the central and superior seventh was presided over by a priestess who not
alone officiated at the central temple, but to whom the male priests of the
six cities and six inferior temples were subservient. The ancient Lycians, the
Sclavs, the Basques of Spain,[15] the Veddas of Ceylon,[16] the inhabitants of
Malabar, the aborigines of widely separated lands, all show convincing
proof of woman’s early superiority in religion, in the state, and in the
family. Monogamy was a marked feature of the Matriarchate. Bachofen,
who has written voluminously upon the Matriarchate, recognizes it as
peculiarly characteristic of woman’s government. He also says the people
who possessed the Mother-rule together with Gynaikokraty (girls’ rule)

excelled in their love of peace and justice. Under the Matriarchal family and
tribal system even long after its partial supersedence by the incoming
Patriarchate, the marriage relation was less oppressive to woman than it has
been under most centuries of christian civilization. Daughters were free in
their choice of husbands, no form of a force or sale existing.[17]
One of the most brilliant modern examples of the Matriarchate was found in
Malabar at the time of its discovery by the Portuguese in the XV century.
The Nairs were found to possess a fine civilization, entirely under the
control of women, at a period when woman’s position in England and on
the Continent of Europe, was that of a household and political slave. Of
Malabar it has been said, that when the Portuguese became acquainted with
the country and the people, they were not so much surprised by the
opulence of their cities, the splendor of all their habits of living, the great
perfection of their navy, the high state of the arts, as they were to find all
this under the entire control and government of women. The difference in
civilization between christian Europe and pagan Malabar at the time of its
discovery was indeed great. While Europe with its new art of printing, was
struggling against the church for permission to use type, its institutions of
learning few, its opportunities for education meagre; its terrible inquisition
crushing free thought and sending thousands each year to a most painful
death, the uncleanliness of its cities and the country such as to bring
frequent visits of the plague; its armies and its navies with but one
exception, imperfect; its women forbidden the right of inheritance,
religious, political, or household authority;—the feminine principle entirely
eliminated from the divinity—a purely masculine God the universal object
of worship, all was directly the opposite in Malabar. Cleanliness, peace, the
arts, a just form of government, the recognition of the feminine both in
humanity and in the divinity were found in Malabar. To the question of a
Danish missionary concerning their opinion of a Supreme Being, this
beautiful answer was given.
The Supreme Being has a Form and yet has no Form; he can be likened
to nothing; we cannot define him and say that he is this or that; he is
neither Man or Woman; neither Heaven or Earth, and yet he is all;
subject to no corruption, no mortality and with neither sleep nor rest, he
is Almighty and Omnipotent without Beginning and without End.[18]

Under the Missionaries sent by England to introduce her own barbaric ideas
of God and man, this beautiful Matriarchal civilization of Malabar soon
retrograded and was lost.
The ancient Mound Builders of America, of whom history is silent and
science profoundly ignorant, are proven by means of symbolism to have
been under Matriarchal rule, and Motherhood religion. Anciently
motherhood was represented by a sphere or circle. The circle, like the
mundane egg, which is but an elongated circle, contains everything in itself
and is the true microcosm. It is eternity, it is feminine, the creative force,
representing spirit. Through its union with matter in the form of the nine
digits it is likewise capable of representing all natural things.[19] The perfect
circle of Giotto was an emblem of divine motherhood in its completeness. It
is a remarkable fact—its significance not recognized,—that the roughly
sketched diameter within the circle, found wherever boys congregate, is an
ancient mystic sign[20] signifying the male and female, or the double-sexed
deity. It is the union of all numbers, the one within the zero mark
comprising ten, and as part of the ancient mysteries signifying God, the
creative power, and eternal life; it was an emblem of The All.
In many old religions, the generative principle was regarded as the mother
of both gods and men. In the Christian religion we find tendency to a
similar recognition in Catholic worship of the Virgin Mary. The most
ancient Aryans were under the Matriarchate, the feminine recognized as the
creative power. The word ma from which all descendants of those peoples
derive their names for mother, was synonymous with Creator. Renouf, the
great antiquarian authority upon the Aryan’s,[21] gives the songs and
ceremonies of the wedding. In these, the woman is represented as having
descended to man from association with divine beings in whose custody
and care she has been, and who give her up with reluctance. In Sanscrit
mythology,[22] the feminine is represented by Swrya, the Sun, the source of
life, while the masculine is described as Soma, a body. Soma, a beverage of
the gods especially sacred to Indra, was the price paid by him for the
assistance of Vayu, the swiftest of the gods, in his battle against the demon
Vritra. A curious line of thought is suggested. The marriage of the man to
the woman was symbolized as his union with the gods. Soma, a drink
devoted to Indra, the highest god, signified his use of a body, or the union

of spirit and body. In the same manner, woman representing spirit, by her
marriage to man became united with a body. As during the present dark age,
the body has been regarded more highly than the spirit, we find a non-
recognition of the woman, although the union of spirit and body is
symbolized in the Christian church by the sacrament of bread and wine.
During the purest period of Aryan history marriage was entirely optional
with woman and when entered into, frequently meant no more than spiritual
companionship. Woman equally with man was entitled to the Brahminical
thread; she also possessed the right to study and preach the Vedas, which
was in itself a proof of her high position in this race. The Vedas, believed to
be the oldest literature extant, were for many ages taught orally requiring
years of close application upon part of both teacher and student.
The word Veda signifies “to-know”; the latter from Vidya meaning “wise.”
The English term widow is traceable to both forms of the word, meaning a
wise woman—one who knows man. Many ages passed before the Vedas
were committed to writing.[23] At that early day the ancestral worship of
women—departed mothers—was as frequent as that of departed fathers,
women conducting such services which took place three times a day. In the
old Aryan Scriptures the right of woman to hold property, and to her
children, was much more fully recognized than under the Christian codes of
today. Many of the olden rights of women are still extant in India. The
learned Keshub Chunder Sen vigorously protested against the introduction
of English law into India, upon the ground that it would destroy the ancient
rights of the women of that country. It was primal Indian law that upon the
death of the husband the wife should heir all his property. Marriage was
regarded as an eternal union, the two, by this act, having so fully become
one, that upon the husband’s death, one half of his body was still living. The
property and the children were held as equally belonging to the husband or
the wife.
Colebrook’s Digest of Hindoo Law, compiled from the writings of the
Bengal Pundit Jergunnat, ’Na Tercapanchama, from those of Vasist ha,
Catayana, and other Indian authorities says:
In the Veda, in Codes of Law, in sacred ordinances, the wife is held as
one person with the husband; both are considered one. When the wife is
not dead, half the body remains; how shall another take the property

when half the body of the owner lives? After the death of the husband
the widow shall take his wealth; this is primeval law.
Though a woman be dependent, the alienation of female property, or of
the mother’s right over her son by the gift of a husband alone[24] is not
valid in law or reason;
The female property of wives like the property of a stranger, may not be
given, for there is want of ownership.
Neither the husband, nor the son, nor the father, nor the brother, have
power to use or alien the legal property of a woman.
We hold it proper that the wife’s co-operation shall be required in civil
contracts and in religious acts under the text.
A gift to a wife is irrevocable.
The collection of East Indian laws made under authority of the celebrated
Warren Hastings, 1776, is of similar character. The kinds of property a wife
can hold separate from her husband at her own disposal by will, are
specified.
During long centuries while under Christian law the Christian wife was not
allowed even the control of property her own at the time of marriage, or of
that which might afterwards be given her, and her right of the disposition of
property at the time of her death was not recognized in Christian lands, the
Hindoo wife under immemorial custom could receive property by gift alike
from her parents, or from strangers, or acquire it by her own industry, and
property thus gained was at her own disposal in case of her death. Another
remarkable feature of Indian law contrasting with that of Christian lands
was preference of woman over man in heirship. In case of a daughter’s
death, the mother heired in preference to father, son, or even husband.
That is called a woman’s property; First. Whatever she owns during the
Agamini Shadee, i. e. Days of Marriage;...
Whatever she may receive from any person as she is going to her
husband’s home or coming from thence.

Whatever her husband may at any time have given her; whatever she
has received at any time from a brother; and whatever her father and
mother may have given her.
Whatever her husband on contracting a second marriage may give her
to pacify her.
Whatever a person may have given a woman for food or clothing.
Whatever jewelry or wearing apparel she may have received from any
person; also whatever a woman may receive from any person as an
acknowledgment or payment for any work performed by her. Whatever
she may by accident have found anywhere.
Whatever she may gain by painting, spinning, needle-work or any
employment of this kind.
Except from one of the family of her father, one of the family of her
mother, or one of the family of her husband, whatever she may receive
from any other person. Also if the father or mother of a girl give
anything to their son-in-law, saying at the same time: “This shall go to
our daughter,” and even without any words to this purpose at the time of
making the gift, if they merely have it in their intention that the thing
thus given should revert to their daughter, all and every one of these
articles are called a woman’s property.
Her right of final disposal by will is also specified. Her effects acquired
during marriage go to her daughters in preference to her sons, and
possessing no daughters, to her mother.
When a woman dies, then whatever effects she acquired during the
Agamini Shadee, even though she hath a son living, shall go first to her
unmarried daughter; if there is but one unmarried daughter she shall
obtain the whole; if there are several unmarried daughters, they all shall
have equal share.
Property under the three forms of marriage, if no unmarried daughters
and others mentioned here, goes to her mother before to her father; and
if neither, to her husband, and if no husband to husband’s younger
brother, or several younger brothers, (if several).

The specification of gifts of intention is remarkable in securing property to
the wife that was seemingly given by the parents to the husband alone. An
equally remarkable fact is the father’s heirship in preference to the
husband’s, and the heirship of the daughters and mother in preference to
any male relative however near, and is in striking contrast to Christian law
in reference to woman’s property. If a husband neglect to provide his wife
necessary food and clothing, the East Indian wife is allowed to procure
them by any means in her power. Maine has not failed to recognize the
superior authority of the eastern wife in relation to property over that of the
Christian wife. He says:
“The settled property of a married woman incapable of alienation by her
husband, is well known to the Hindoos under the name of Stridham.”
It is certainly a remarkable fact that the institution seems to have
developed among the Hindoos at a period relatively much earlier than
among the Romans. The Mitakshara, one of the oldest and most revered
authorities of the Hindoo judicial treatises, defines Stridham, or
woman’s property, as that which is given to the wife by the father, the
mother, or a brother at the time of the wedding, before the nuptial fire.
But adds Maine:
The compiler of Mitakshara adds a proportion not found elsewhere; also
property which she may have acquired by inheritance, purchase,
partition, seizure or finding, is denominated woman’s property.... If all
this be
Stridham, it follows that the ancient Hindoo law secured to married
women an even greater degree of proprietary independence than that
given to them by the modern English Married Woman’s Property Act.
Property is common to the husband and the wife. The ample support of
those who are entitled to maintenance is rewarded with bliss in heaven; but
hell is the portion of that man whose family is afflicted with pain by his
neglect. Therefore the Hindoo husband is taught to maintain his family with
the utmost care. Maxims from the sacred books show the regard in which
the Hindoo woman is held:
“He who despises woman despises his mother.”

“Who is cursed by woman is cursed by God.”
“The tears of a woman call down the fire of heaven on those who make
them flow.”
“Evil to him who laughs at woman’s sufferings; God shall laugh at his
prayers.”
“It was at the prayer of a woman that the Creator pardoned man; cursed
be he who forgets it.”
“Who shall forget the sufferings of his mother at his birth shall be
reborn in the body of an owl during three successive transmigrations.”
“There is no crime more odious than to persecute woman.”
“When women are honored the divinities are content; but when they are
not honored all undertakings fail.”
“The households cursed by women to whom they have not rendered the
homage due them, find themselves weighed down with ruin and
destroyed as if they had been struck by some secret power.”
“We will not admit the people of today are incapable of comprehending
woman, who alone can regenerate them.”
The marriage ceremony is of the slightest kind and under three forms:
1. Of mutual consent by the interchange of necklaces or strings of
flowers in some secret place.
2. A woman says, “I am become your wife,” and the man says, “I
acknowledge it.”
3. When the parents of a girl on her marriage day say to the bridegroom:
“Whatever act of religion you perform, perform it with our daughter,”
and the bridegroom assents to this speech.
The comparatively modern custom of suttee originated with the priests,
whose avaricious desires created this system in order thereby to secure the
property of the widow. The Vedas do not countenance either suttee or the
widow’s relinquishment of her property, the law specifically declaring, “If a

widow should give all her property and estate to the Brahmins for religious
purposes, the gift indeed is valid, but the act is improper and the woman
blamable.” An ancient scripture declares that “All the wisdom of the Vedas,
and all that has been written in books, is to be found concealed in the heart
of a woman.” It is a Hindoo maxim that one mother is worth a thousand
fathers, because the mother carries and nourishes the infant from her own
body, therefore the mother is most reverenced. A Hindoo proverb declares
that “Who leaves his family naked and unfed may taste honey at first, but
shall afterwards find it poison.” Another says, “A wife is a friend in the
house of the good.”
Ancient Egypt worshiped two classes of gods; one purely spiritual and
eternal, the other secondary but best beloved, were believed to have been
human beings who from the services they had rendered to humanity were
upon death admitted to the assembly of the gods. Such deification common
in ancient times, is still customary in some parts of the earth. Within the
past few years a countryman of our own was thus apotheosized by the
Chinese to whom he had rendered valuable service at the time of the Tae-
ping rebellion.[25] Ancient Egyptians recognized a masculine and feminine
principle entering in all things both material and spiritual. Isis, the best
beloved and most worshiped of the secondary gods, was believed by them
to have been a woman who at an early period of Egyptian history had
rendered that people invaluable service. She was acknowledged as their
earliest law-maker, through whose teaching the people had risen from
barbarism to civilization. She taught them the art of making bread[26] from
the cereals theretofore growing wild and unused, the inhabitants at an early
day living upon roots and herbs. Egypt soon became the grain growing
portion of the globe, her enormous crops of wheat not alone aiding herself,
but rendering the long stability of the Roman Empire possible. The science
of medicine was believed to have originated with Isis; she was also said to
have invented the art of embalming, established their literature, founded
their religion. The whole Egyptian civilization was ascribed to the woman-
goddess, Isis, whose name primarily Ish-Ish, signified Light, Life.[27] Isis,
and Nepthys—the Lady of the House—were worshiped as the Beginning
and the End. They were the Alpha and Omega of the most ancient Egyptian
religion. The statues of Isis bore this inscription:

I am all that has been, all that shall be, and none among mortals has
hitherto taken off my veil.
Isis was believed to contain germs within herself for the reproduction of all
living things. The most universal of her 10,000 names was, “Potent Mother
Goddess.”[28] This Egyptian regard for Isis is an extremely curious and
interesting reminiscence of the Matriarchal period. Her worship was
universal throughout Egypt. Her temples were magnificent. Her priests,
consecrated to purity, were required to bathe daily, to wear linen garments
unmixed with animal fibre, to abstain from animal food, and also from
those vegetables regarded as impure.[29] Two magnificent festivals were
yearly celebrated in her honor, the whole people taking part. During one of
these festivals her priests bore a golden ship in the procession. The ship, or
ark,[30] is peculiarly significative of the feminine principle, and wherever
found is a reminiscence of the Matriarchate. The most sacred mysteries of
the Egyptian religion, whose secrets even Pythagoras could not penetrate, to
which Herodotus alluded with awe, and that were unknown to any person
except the highest order of priests, owed their institution to Isis, and were
based upon moral responsibility and a belief in a future life. The
immortality of the soul was the underlying principle of the Egyptian
religion.
Isis seems to have been one of those extraordinary individuals, such as
occasionally in the history of the world have created a literature, founded a
religion, established a nationality. She was a person of superior mentality,
with power to diffuse intelligence.
Moses, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” borrowed much from
Isis. The forms and ceremonies used in her worship were largely copied by
him, yet lacked the great moral element—immortal life—so conspicuously
taught as a part of Egyptian religion. The Sacred Songs of Isis were an
important part of the literature of Egypt. Plato, who burned his own poems
after reading Homer, declared them worthy of the divinity, believing them
to be literally 10,000 years old.[31] All orders of the priesthood were open to
women in Egypt; sacred colleges existed for them, within whose walls
dwelt an order of priestesses known as “God’s Hand,” “God’s Star.” Its
ranks were recruited from women of the principal families, whose only

employment was the service of the gods. “Daughter of the Deity,” signified
a priestess.
Women performed the most holy offices of religion, carrying the Sacred
Sistrum and offering sacrifices of milk, both ceremonies of great dignity
and importance, being regarded as the most sacred service of the divinity.
Such sacrificial rites were confined to queens and princesses of the royal
household. Ames-Nofri-Ari, a queen who received great honor from
Egyptians, spoken of as the “goddess-wife of Amun,” the supreme god of
Thebes, for whose worship the wonderful temple of Karnak was founded by
a Pharaoh of the XII dynasty, is depicted on the monuments as the Chief
High Priest—the Sem, whose specific duty was offering sacrifices and
pouring out libations in that temple. By virtue of her high office she
preceded her husband, the powerful and renowned Rameses II. The high
offices of the church were as habitually held by women as by men; Princess
Neferhotep, of the fifth dynasty, was both a priestess and a prophetess of the
goddesses Hathor and Neith, the representatives of celestial space, in which
things were both created and preserved.
A priestess and priest in time of the XIII Pharaoh represented on a slab of
limestone, in possession of the Ashmolean Library of Oxford, England, is
believed to be the oldest monument of its kind in the world, dating to 3,500,
B.C.
Queen Hatasu, the light of the brilliant XVIII dynasty, is depicted upon the
monuments as preceding in acts of worship the great Thotmes III, her
brother, whom she had associated with herself upon the throne, but who did
not acquire supreme power until after her death.[32] The reign of Hatasu was
pre-eminent as the great architectural period of Egypt, the engraving upon
monuments during her reign closely resembling the finest Greek intaglio.
Egypt, so famous for her gardens and her art of forcing blossoms out of
season, was indebted to this great queen for the first acclimatizing of plants.
Upon one of her voyages she brought with her in baskets filled with earth
several of those Balsam trees from Arabia, which were numbered among
the precious gifts of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon. The red granite
obelisks erected by Hatasu before the gates of Karnak, the most magnificent
and loftiest ever erected in Egypt, were ninety-seven feet in height and
surmounted by a pyramid of gold.

As early as the XI Pharaoh, II dynasty, the royal succession became fixed in
the female line. A princess was endowed with privileges superior to a
prince, her brother, her children reigning by royal prerogative even when
her husband was a commoner; the children of a prince of the Pharaonic
house making such marriage were declared illegitimate.
From the highest to the most humble priestly office, women officiated in
Egypt. A class of sacred women were doorkeepers of temples, another order
known as “Sacred Scribes” were paid great deference. The Pellices or
Pellucidae of Amun were a remarkable body of priestesses whose burial
place has but recently been discovered. They were especially devoted to the
services of Amun-Ra, the Theban Jove. Egypt was indebted to priestesses
for some of its most important literature. To Penthelia, a priestess of
Phtha[33] the God of Fire, in Memphis, Bryant ascribes the authorship of the
Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer[34] in his travels through that country, by aid
of a suborned priest, having stolen these poems from the archives of the
temples of Phtha where they had been deposited for safe keeping.
The priestly class of prophetesses was large in Egypt, their predictions not
infrequently changing the course of that country’s history. To his daughter,
the prophet-priestess Athryte, was the great Rameses II indebted for the
prophecy which led him into his conquering and victorious career. Known
as one of the four great conquerors of antiquity,[35] reigning sixty years, he
greatly added to the wealth and renown of Egypt.
The class of priestesses called Sibyls were early known in Egypt, India, and
other portions of the ancient world. They were regarded as the most holy
order of the priesthood and held to be in direct communion with the gods,
who through them revealed secrets to the lower order of priests; the word
Sibyl originating from Syros, i. e. God. The learned Beale defines Sibyl as
thought, therefore a woman in possession of God’s thought. The names of
ten renowned Sibyls have come down to our day. The Sibyline Books for
many years governed the destinies of Rome. Oracles were rendered from
the lips of a priestess known as the Pythia; the famous Delphian Shrine for
ages ruling the course of kings and nations.
Upon the monuments of Egypt, those indisputable historic records, queens
alone are found wearing the triple crown, significant of ecclesiastical,

judicial and civil power, thus confirming the statement of Diodorus that
queens were shown greater respect and possessed more power than kings:
the pope alone in modern times claiming the emblematic triple crown. A
comparison between the men and women of the common people of this
country, shows no less favorably for the latter. Women were traders, buying
and selling in the markets while the men engaged in the more laborious
work of weaving at home. Woman’s medical and hygienic knowledge is
proven by the small number of infantile deaths.[36] At the marriage
ceremony the husband promised obedience to the wife in all things, took
her name, and his property passed into her control; according to Wilkinson
great harmony existed in the marriage relation, the husband and wife sitting
upon the same double chair in life and resting at death in the same tomb.
Montesquieu says:
It must be admitted although it shocks our present customs, that among
the most polished peoples, wives have always had authority over their
husbands. The Egyptians established it by law in honor of Isis, and the
Babylonians did the same in time of Semiramis. It has been said of the
Romans that they ruled all nations but obeyed their wives.
Crimes against women were rare in Egypt and when occurring were most
severely punished.[37] Rameses III caused this inscription to be engraved
upon his monuments:
To unprotected woman there is freedom to wander through the whole
country wheresoever she list without apprehending danger.
A woman was one of the founders of the ancient Parsee religion, which
taught the existence of but a single god, thus introducing monotheism into
that rare old kingdom. Until the introduction of Christianity woman largely
preserved the liberty belonging to her in the old civilizations. Of her
position under Roman law before this period Maine (Gaius) says:
The jurisconsults had evidently at this time assumed the equality of the
sexes as a principle of the law of equity. The situation of the Roman
woman whether married or single became one of great personal and
proprietary independence; but Christianity tended somewhat from the
commencement to narrow this remarkable liberty. The prevailing state

of religious sentiment may explain why modern jurisprudence has
adopted these rules concerning the position of women which belong to
an imperfect civilization. No society which preserves any tincture of
Christian institutions is likely to restore to married women the personal
liberty conferred on them by middle Roman law. Canon law has deeply
injured civilization.
Rome not only secured remarkable personal and proprietary rights to
woman, but as Vestal Virgin, she held the highest priestly office. No shrine
equalled that of the Vestals in sanctity; none was so honored by the state. To
their care the sacred Fire was entrusted, and also the Palladium; those
unknown articles upon whose preservation not alone the welfare but the
very existence of Rome was held to depend. The most important secrets of
state were entrusted to them and their influence in civil affairs was scarcely
secondary to their religious authority. In troubled times, in civil wars, in
extreme emergencies of the commonwealth they acted as ambassadors, or
were chosen umpires to restore peace between the parties. In state
ceremonies, in the most solemn, civil or religious meetings they performed
important duties. They were superior to the common law or the authority of
the consul. The most important secrets were entrusted to them, wills of the
emperors and documents of state confided to their care; offenses against
them were punished with death. If meeting a criminal on his way to
execution, he was pardoned as a direct intervention of heaven in his behalf.
Among their important privileges was exemption from public taxes, the
right to make a will, internment within the city walls, the right to drive in
the city where no other carriage was allowed; even the consuls were obliged
to make room for them to pass. Chosen from noble families when between
the ages of six and ten, their terms of service was thirty years.
The order of Vestal Virgins flourished eleven hundred years, having been
founded seven hundred years before the Christian era and continuing four
hundred years afterwards. But those women all young, all between the ages
of six years and forty, so closely guarded the secrets of the Penetralia that to
this day they still remain as unknown as when in their charge. The order
was destroyed in the fourth century, but the ruins of their temple recently
discovered prove that when obliged to flee from the sacred enclosure they
first demolished the most holy portion where the secrets of Rome were
hidden.[38] Recent important archaeological discoveries at the Atrium Vertae

in the Forum, corroborate history in regard to the high position and
extraordinary privileges of the Vestals. Several statues have been found
representing the sacred maiden with the historic fillet about her head and
the cord beneath her breast. Medallions worn upon the breast of their horses
have also been unearthed. The wealth of the order was extremely great, both
its public and private property being exempt from that conscription which
in times of war reached all but a few favored individuals.
The names by which Imperial Rome was known were all feminine; Roma,
Flora, Valentia; nearly its first and greatest goddess was Vesta.[39]
Sacred and secret were originally synonymous terms. All learning was
sacred, consequently secret, and as only those possessed of learning were
eligible to the priestly office it is readily seen that knowledge was a
common heritage of primitive women. Letters, numbers, astrology,
geography and all branches of science were secrets known only to initiates.
The origin of the most celebrated mysteries, the Eleusinian, and those of
Isis, were attributed to woman, the most perfect temple of ancient or
modern times, the Parthenon, or Temple of the Virgins, was dedicated to the
goddess Minerva.
Chryseis was priestess of Juno in Argo. This office was of great civil as well
as religious importance regulating their dates and chronology. To the
present day in China woman assists at the altar in ancestral worship, the
prevailing form of religious adoration. The mother of a family is treated
with the greatest respect[40] and the combined male and female principle is
represented in god under the name Fou-Fou, that is, Father-Mother.[41]
When the Emperor acting as high priest performs certain rites he is called
Father-Mother of the people. Woman is endowed with the same political
powers as man.[42] The wife presides like her husband at family councils,
trials, etc. As Regent, she governs the Empire with wisdom, dignity, power,
as was shown during the co-regency of the Empresses of the East and of the
West, their power continuing even after the promotion of a boy-heir to the
throne.
A Thibetan woman empire extant between the VI and VII centuries A.D. is
spoken of by Chinese writers. An English author, Cooper, seems to have
visited this region, meeting with an amusing venture while there.[43]

Under the law of the Twelve Tables, founded A.U.C. 300, woman possessed
the right of repudiation in marriage. The code itself was ascribed to a
woman of that primitive Athens founded and governed by women long
years previous to the date of modern Athens. The change in woman’s
condition for the worse under Christianity is very remarkable and
everywhere it is noticed. Among the Finns, before their conversion, the
mother of a family took precedence of the father in the rites of domestic
worship. Under the Angles, a wound inflicted upon a virgin was punished
with double the penalty of the same injury inflicted upon a man, remarkable
as showing the high esteem and reverence in which women were held.
Before the introduction of Christianity, the Germans bound themselves to
chastity in the marriage relation; under Catholicism the wife is required to
promise the devotion of her body to the marital rite. German women served
as priestesses of Hertha, and during the time of Rome’s greatest power,
Wala or Valleda,—this title being significative of a supremely wise woman,
a prophetess,—was virtual ruler of the Germanic forces; Druses when about
invading Germany was repelled by her simple command to “Go Back.” But
under Christianity the German woman no longer takes part in public affairs,
education is denied, the most severe and degrading labor of field, streets
and mine falls upon her, while in the family she is serf to father, brother,
husband.
The women of ancient Scandinavia were treated with infinite respect;
breach of marriage promise was classed with perjury; its penalty was
outlawry. Marriage was regarded as sacred and in many instances the
husband was obliged to submit to the wife.[44] Those old Berserkers
reverenced their Alruna, or Holy Women, on earth and worshiped goddesses
in heaven, where, according to Scandinavian belief, gods and goddesses sat
together in a hall without distinction of sex.
The whole ancient world recognized a female priesthood, some peoples,
like the Roman, making national safety dependent upon their ministration;
others as in Egypt, according them pre-eminence in the priestly office,
reverencing goddesses as superior to gods; still others as the Scandinavians,
making no distinction in equality between gods and goddesses; others
governing the nation’s course through oracles which fell from feminine lips,
still others looking to the Sibylline Books for like decision.[45] Those
historians anxious to give most credit to the humanizing effect of

Christianity upon woman are compelled to admit her superiority among
pagan nations before the advent of this religion.[46]
The Patriarchate under which Biblical history and Judaism commenced,
was a rule of men whose lives and religion were based upon passions of the
grossest kind, showing but few indications of softness or refinement.
Monogamous family life did not exist, but a polygamy whose primal object
was the formation of a clan possessing hereditary chiefs ruling
aristocratically. To this end the dominion of man over woman and the birth
of many children was requisite. To this end polygamy was instituted,
becoming as marked a feature of the Patriarchate as monogamy was of the
Matriarchate. Not until the Patriarchate were wives regarded as property,
the sale of daughters as a legitimate means of family income, or their
destruction at birth looked upon as a justifiable act. Under the Patriarchate,
society became morally revolutionized, the family, the state, the form of
religion entirely changed. The theory of a male supreme God in the interests
of force and authority, wars, family discord, the sacrifice of children to
appease the wrath of an offended (male) deity are all due to the Patriarchate.
These were practices entirely out of consonance with woman’s thought and
life. Biblical Abraham binding Isaac for sacrifice to Jehovah, carefully kept
his intentions from the mother Sarah. Jephtha offering up his daughter in
accordance with his vow, allowing her a month’s life for the bewailment of
her virginity, are but typical of the low regard of woman under the
Patriarchate. During this period the destruction of girl children became a
widely extended practice, and infantile girl murder the custom of many
nations. During the Matriarchate all life was regarded as holy; even the
sacrifice of animals was unknown.[47] The most ancient and purest religions
taught sacrifice of the animal passions as the great necessity in self-
purification. But the Patriarchate subverted this sublime teaching,
materializing spiritual truths, and substituting the sacrifice of animals,
whose blood was declared a sweet smelling savor to the Lord of Hosts.
Both infanticide and prostitution with all their attendant horrors are
traceable with polygamy,—their origin—to the Patriarchate or Father-rule,
under which Judaism and Christianity rose as forms of religious belief.
Under the Patriarchate woman has ever been regarded as a slave to be
disposed of as father, husband or brother chose. Even in the most Christian
lands, daughters have been esteemed valuable only in proportion to the

political or pecuniary advantage they brought to the father, in the legal
prostitution of an enforced marriage. The sacrifice of woman to man’s baser
passions has ever been the distinguishing characteristic of the Patriarchate.
But woman’s degradation is not the normal condition of humanity, neither
did it arise from a settled principle of evolution, but is a retrogression, due
to the grossly material state of the world for centuries past, in which it has
lost the interior meaning or spiritual significance of its own most holy
words.
Jehovah signifies not alone the masculine and the feminine principles but
also the spirit or vivifying intelligence. It is a compound word indicative of
the three divine principles.[48] Holy Ghost, although in Hebrew a noun of
either gender, masculine, feminine, neuter, is invariably rendered masculine
by Christian translators of the Bible.[49] In the Greek, from whence we
obtain the New Testament, spirit is of the feminine gender, although
invariably translated masculine. The double-sexed word, Jehovah, too
sacred to be spoken by the Jews, signified the masculine-feminine God.[50]
The proof of the double meaning of Jehovah, the masculine and feminine
signification, Father-Mother, is undeniable. Lanci, one of the great
orientalists, says:
Jehovah should be read from left to right, and pronounced Ho-Hi; that is
to say He-She (Hi pronounced He,) Ho in Hebrew being the masculine
pronoun and Hi the feminine. Ho-Hi therefore denotes the male and
female principles, the vis genatrix.[51]
Kingsford says:
The arbitrary and harsh aspect under which Jehovah is chiefly presented
in the Hebrew Scriptures is due not to any lack of the feminine element
either in His name or in His nature, or to any failure on the part of the
inspired leaders of Israel to recognize their equality, but to the
rudimentary condition of the people at large, and their consequent
amenability to the delineation of the stern side only of the Divine
Character.[52]
The Hebrew word El Shaddai, translated, “The Almighty” is still more
distinctively feminine than Iah, as it means “The Breasted God,” and is

made use of in the Old Testament whenever the especially feminine
characteristics of God are meant to be indicated.[53]
The story of the building of the tower of Babel and the subsequent
confusion of language possesses deep interior significance; the word
(Babel) meaning “God the Father” as distinct and separate from the
feminine principle. The confusion which has come upon humanity because
of this separation has been far more lamentable in its results than a mere
confounding of tongues.[54] In the earliest religions the recognition of the
feminine principle in the divinity is everywhere found. “I am the Father and
Mother of the Universe” said Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
An Orphic hymn says: “Zeus is the first and the last, the head and the
extremities; from him have proceeded all things.” He is a man and an
immortal nymph i.e. the male and female element. The Sohar declares “the
ancient of the ancient has a form and has no form.”
The Holy Spirit, symbolized by a dove, is a distinctively feminine principle
—the Comforter—and yet has ever been treated by the Christian Church as
masculine, alike in dogmas propounded from the pulpit, and in translations
of the Scriptures. A few notable exceptions however appear at an early date.
Origen expressly referred to the Holy Ghost as feminine, saying: “The soul
is maiden to her mistress the Holy Ghost.” An article upon the “Esoteric
character of the Gospels” in Madam Blavatsky’s Lucifer (November 1887)
says:
Spirit or the Holy Ghost was feminine with the Jews as most ancient
peoples and it was so with the early Christians; Sophia of the Gnostics
and the third Sephiroth, Binah (the female Jehovah of the Cabalists,) are
feminine principles “Divine Spirit” or Ruach, “One is She the spirit of
the Elohim of Life,” is said in Sepher Yetzirah.[55]
An early canonical book of the New Testament known as “The Everlasting
Gospel” also as “The Gospel of the Holy Ghost” represents Jesus as saying,
“My mother the Holy Ghost, took me by the hair of my head up into a
mountain.”
The word sacred simply meaning secret, having its origin as shown at the
time when knowledge was kept hidden from the bulk of mankind, only to

be acquired by initiation in the mysteries, so also the word holy simply
means whole, that is, undivided. In its ignorance, unwisdom, and fear of
investigation, mankind has allowed a division of the two divine principles,
male and female, to obtain firm hold in their minds. Prejudice, which
simply means prejudgment, a judgment without proof, has long ruled
mankind, owing chiefly to that bondage of the will inflicted by a tyrannous
self-seeking priesthood. But we have now reached a period in history when
investigation is again taking the place of blind belief and the truth, capable
of making man free, is once more offered. It is through a recognition of the
divine element of motherhood as not alone inhering in the great primal
source of life but as extending throughout all creation, that it will become
possible for the world, so buried in darkness, folly and superstition, to
practice justice toward woman. Not legislation but education will bring
about the change; not external acts but internal thought. It is but a few years
since the acknowledgment of a feminine element even in plants was
regarded by the church as heretical. Yet though still perceiving but partial
truth, science now declares the feminine principle to inhere in plants, rocks,
gems, and even in the minutest atoms; thus in some degree recognizing the
occult axiom “As it is above, so it is below.”

Chapter Two

Celibacy

While the inferior and secondary position of woman early became an
integral portion of Christianity, its fullest efforts are seen in Church
teachings regarding marriage. Inasmuch as it was a cardinal doctrine that
the fall of Adam took place through his temptation into marriage by Eve,
this relation was regarded with holy horror as a continuance of the evil
which first brought sin into the world, depriving man of his immortality.[1]
It is a notable fact that the expected millennium of a thousand years upon
earth with its material joys has ever had more attraction for Christians than
the eternal spiritual rapture of heaven. Many of the old Fathers taught that
“the world is a state of matrimony, but paradise of virginity.”[2] To such
extent was this doctrine carried it was declared that had it not have been for
the fall, God would have found some way outside of this relation for
populating the world, consequently marriage was regarded as a condition of
peculiar temptation and trial; celibacy as one of especial holiness.
The androgynous theory of primal man found many supporters, the
separation into two beings having been brought about by sensual desire.
Jacob Boehme and earlier mystics of that class recognized the double
sexuality of God in whose image man was made. One of the most revered
ancient Scriptures, “The Gospel according to the Hebrews,” which was in
use as late as the second century of the Christian era, taught the equality of
the feminine in the Godhead; also that daughters should inherit with sons.
Thirty-three fragments of this Gospel have recently been discovered. The
fact remains undeniable that at the advent of Christ, a recognition of the
feminine element in the divinity had not entirely died out from general
belief, the earliest and lost books of the New Testament teaching this
doctrine, the whole confirmed by the account of the birth and baptism of
Jesus, the Holy Spirit,[3] the feminine creative force, playing the most
important part. It was however but a short period before the church through

Canons and Decrees, as well as apostolic and private teaching, denied the
femininity of the Divine equally with the divinity of the feminine. There is
however abundant proof that even under but partial recognition of the
feminine principle as entering in the divinity, woman was officially
recognized in the early services of the church, being ordained to the
ministry, officiating as deacons, administering the act of baptism,
dispensing the sacrament, interpreting doctrines and founding sects which
received their names.[4]
The more mystical among priests taught that before woman was separated
from man, the Elementals[5] were accepted by man as his children and
endowed by him with immortality, but at the separation of the androgynous
body into the two beings Adam and Eve, the woman through accident was
also endowed with immortality which theretofore had solely inhered in the
masculine portion of the double-sexed being. These mystics also taught that
this endowment of woman with immortality together with her capability of
bringing new beings into existence also endowed with immortal life, was
the cause of intense enmity toward her on the part of the Elementals,
especially shown by their bringing suffering and danger upon her at this
period.
Still another class recognizing marriage as a necessity for the continuance
of the species, looked upon it with more favor, attributing the fall to another
cause, yet throwing odium upon the relation by maintaining that the
marriage of Adam and Eve did not take place until after they had been
driven from Paradise. This doctrine was taught by the Father Hieronymus.
[6]
Thus with strange inconsistency the church supported two entirely
opposing views of marriage. Yet even those who upheld its necessity still
taught woman’s complete subordination to man in that relation; also that
this condition was one of great tribulation to man, it was even declared that
God caused sleep to fall upon Adam at the creation of Eve in order to
prevent his opposition.[7] Lecky speaking of the noxious influences of
ascetics upon marriage, says it would be difficult to conceive anything more
coarse and repulsive than the manner in which the church regarded it; it was
invariably treated as a consequence of the fall of Adam and regarded from
its lowest aspect.[8] But having determined that evil was necessary in order
to future good, the church decided to compel a belief that its control of this

contract lessened the evil, to this end declaring marriage illegal without
priestly sanction; thus creating a conviction of and belief in its sacramental
nature in the minds of the people. Despite the favoring views of a class
regarding marriage, celibacy was taught as the highest condition for both
man and woman, and as early as the third century many of the latter entered
upon a celibate life, Jerome using his influence in its favor. Augustine,
while admitting the possibility of salvation to the married, yet speaking of a
mother and daughter in heaven, compared the former to a star of the second
magnitude, but the latter as shining with great brilliancy. The superior
respect paid to the celibates even among women is attributed to direct
instruction of the apostles. The “Apostolic Constitutions” held even by the
Episcopal church as regulations established by the apostles themselves, and
believed to be among the earliest christian records, give elaborate directions
for the places of all who attend church, the unmarried being the most
honored. The virgins and widows and elder women stood or sat first of all.
The chief respect shown by the early fathers towards marriage was that it
gave virgins to the church, while the possibility of salvation to the married,
at first recognized, was denied at later date even to persons otherwise living
holy lives. The Emperor Jovinian banished a man who asserted the
possibility of salvation to married persons provided they obeyed all the
ordinances of the church and lived good lives.[9] As part of this doctrine, the
church taught that woman was under an especial curse and man a divinely
appointed agent for the enforcement of that curse. It inculcated the belief
that all restrictions placed upon her were but parts of her just punishment
for having caused the fall of man. Under such teaching a belief in the
supreme virtue of celibacy—first declared by the apostle Paul,—was firmly
established. To Augustine is the world indebted for full development of the
theory of original sin, promulgated by Paul as a doctrine of the Christian
Church in the declaration that Adam, first created, was not first in sin. Paul,
brought up in the strictest external principles of Judaism, did not lose his
educational bias or primal belief when changing from Judaism to
Christianity.[10] Neither was his character as persecutor changed when he
united his fortunes with the new religion. He gave to the Christian world a
lever long enough to reach down through eighteen centuries, all that time
moving it in opposition to a belief in woman’s created and religious
equality with man, to her right of private judgment and to her personal

freedom. His teaching that Adam, first created, was not first in sin, divided
the unity of the human race in the assumption that woman was not part of
the original creative idea but a secondary thought, an inferior being brought
into existence as an appendage to man.
Although based upon a false conception of the creative power, this theory
found ready acceptance in the minds of the men of the new church. Not
illiterate, having received instruction at the feet of Gamaliel, Paul was yet
intolerant and credulous, nay more, unscrupulous. He was the first Jesuit in
the Christian church, “Becoming all things to all men.” The Reformed
church with strange unanimity has chosen Paul as its leader and the
accepted exponent of its views. He may justly be termed the Protestant
Pope, and although even among Catholics rivalling Peter in possession of
the heavenly keys, yet the Church of Rome has accepted his authority as in
many respects to be more fully obeyed than even the teachings of St. Peter.
[11]
Having been accepted by the Church as the apostolic exponent of its
views upon marriage, it was but to be expected that his teachings should be
received as divine. That Paul was unmarried has been assumed because of
his bitterness against this relation, yet abundant proof of his having a wife
exists. For the membership of the Great Sanhedrim, marriage was a
requisite. St. Clement of Alexandria positively declared that St. Paul had a
wife. Until the time of Cromwell, when it was burned, a MS. letter of St.
Ignatius in Greek was preserved in the old Oxford Library; this letter spoke
of “St. Peter and Paul and the apostles who were married.” Another letter of
St. Ignatius is still extant in the Vatican Library. Tussian and others who
have seen it declare that it also speaks of St. Paul as a married man.[12] But
tenderness toward woman does not appear in his teachings; man is
represented as the master, “the head” of woman. In consonance with his
teaching, responsibility has been denied her through the ages; although the
Church has practically held her amenable for the ruin of the world,
prescribing penance and hurling anathemas against her whom it has
characterized as the “door of hell.”
At a synod in Winchester in the eighth century, St. Dunstan, famed for his
hatred of women, made strenuous effort to enforce celibate life. It was
asserted to be so highly immoral for a priest to marry, that even a wooden
cross had audibly declared against the horrid practice.[13] Although in the

third century marriage was permitted to all orders of the clergy,[14] yet the
very ancient “Gospel of the Egyptians,” endorsed as canonical by Clement
of Alexandria, taught celibacy. These old christian theologians found the
nature of woman a prolific subject of discussion, a large party classing her
among brutes without soul or reason. As early as the sixth century a council
at Macon (585), fifty-nine bishops taking part, devoted its time to a
discussion of this question, “Does woman possess a soul?” Upon one side it
was argued that woman should not be called “homo”; upon the opposite
side that she should, because, first, the Scriptures declared that God created
man, male and female; second, that Jesus Christ, son of a woman, is called
the son of man. Christian women were therefore allowed to remain human
beings in the eyes of the clergy, even though considered very weak and bad
ones. But nearly a thousand years after this decision in favor of the
humanity of the women of Christian Europe, it was still contended that the
women of newly discovered America belonged to the brute creation,
possessing neither souls nor reason.[15] As late as the end of the sixteenth
century an anonymous work appeared, arguing that women were no part of
mankind, but a species of intermediate animal between the human and the
brute creation. (Mulieres non est homines, etc.) Mediaeval christian
writings show many discussions upon this point, the influence of these old
assertions still manifesting themselves.
Until the time of Peter the Great, women were not recognized as human
beings in that great division of Christendom known as the Greek church, the
census of that empire counting only males, or so many “souls”—no woman
named. Traces of this old belief have not been found wanting in our own
country within the century. As late as the Woman’s Rights Convention in
Philadelphia, 1854, an objector in the audience cried out: “Let women first
prove they have souls; both the Church and the State deny it.”
Everything connected with woman was held to be unclean. It is stated that
Agathro desired the Sophist Herodes to get ready for him the next morning
a vessel full of pure milk, that is to say which had not been milked by the
hand of a woman. But he perceived as soon as it was offered to him that it
was not such as he desired, protesting that the scent of her hands who had
milked it offended his nostrils. In the oldest European churches great
distinction was made between the purity of man and woman. At an early
date woman was forbidden to receive the Eucharist into her naked hand on

account of her impurity,[16] or to sing in church on account of her inherent
wickedness. To such an extent was this opposition carried, that the church
of the middle ages did not hesitate to provide itself with eunuchs in order to
supply cathedral choirs with the soprano tones inhering by nature in woman
alone. One of the principal charges against the Huguenots was that they
permitted women to sing in church, using their voices in praise of God
contrary to the express command of St. Paul, Catherine de Medicis
reproaching them for this great sin.[17] The massacre at St. Bartholomew,
when 30,000 men, women and children lost their lives, and the entire
destruction of many families of purest character took place, with an
additional great loss to France from the self-imposed banishment of
hundreds more, may be traced to the teaching of St. Paul that woman should
keep silence in the church. This doctrine also crossed the ocean with the
Puritan Fathers, and has appeared in America under many forms.[18]
The Christianity of the ages teaching the existence of a superior and inferior
sex, possessing different rights under the law and in the church, it has been
easy to bring man and woman under accountability to a different code of
morals. For this double code the church is largely indebted to the subtle and
acute Paul, who saw in the new religion but an enlarged Judaism that should
give prominence to Abraham and his seed from whom Christ claimed
descent. His conversion did not remove his old Jewish contempt for
woman, as shown in his temple service, the law forbidding her entrance
beyond the outer court. Nor could he divest himself of the spirit of the old
morning prayer which daily led each Jew to thank God that he was not born
a heathen, a slave or a woman.
He brought into the new dispensation the influence of the old ceremonial
law, which regarded woman as unclean. The Jewish exclusion of forty days
from even the outer court of the sanctuary to the woman who had given
birth to a son, and of twice that period, or eighty days, if a daughter had
been born, was terminated in both religions by a sin-offering in expiation of
the mother’s crime for having, at the peril of her own, brought another
human being into life.[19] This Old Testament teaching degraded the life-
giving principle exemplified in motherhood, and in a two-fold way lessened
the nation’s regard for womanhood. First, through the sin-offering and
purification demanded of the mother; second, by its doubling the period of

exclusion from the temple in case a girl was given to the world.[20] The
birth of girls even under Christianity has everywhere been looked upon as
an infliction, and thousands have been immured in convents, there to die of
despair or to linger through years,[21] the victim alike of father and of priest.
The influence of Judaism extended through Christendom. The custom of
purification after maternity inherited by the church from Judaism brought
with it into Christianity the same double restriction and chastening of the
mother in case her infant proved a girl, a gift as propitiation or expiation
being required. Uncleanliness was attributed to woman in every function of
her being; the purification of the Virgin Mary, who was not exempt, when
after the birth of a God, being used as an incontrovertible argument in
proof. A festival of the purification of the Virgin Mary, adopted from
paganism, was introduced into Rome at an early date, thus perpetuating a
belief in the uncleanliness of motherhood. The Church in the Roman
Empire soon united with the State[22] in imposing new restrictions upon
women. Since the Reformation the mother’s duty of expiation has been
confirmed by the Anglican Church, and is known in England as
“churching.” Directions as to the woman’s dress at this time was early made
the subject of a canon.[23] She was to be decently appareled. This term
“decently,” variously interpreted, was at times the occasion of serious
trouble. In 1661, during the reign of James I, the Chancellor of Norwich
ordered that every woman who came to be churched should be covered with
a white veil. A woman who refused to conform to this order was
excommunicated for contempt. She prayed a prohibition, alleging that such
order was not warranted by any custom or Canon of the Church of England.
The judges of the civil court, finding themselves incompetent to decide
upon such a momentous question, requested the opinion of the archbishop
of Canterbury. Not willing to trust his own judgment, that dignitary
convened several bishops for consultation. Their decision was against the
woman, this Protestant Council upon woman’s dress declaring that it was
the ancient usage of the Church of England for women who were to be
churched to come veiled, and a prohibition was denied.
The doctrine that woman must remain covered when in the sacred church
building shows itself in the United States.[24] In many instances under
Christianity, woman has been entirely excluded from religious houses and

church buildings. When Pope Boniface[25] founded the abbey of Fulda he
prohibited the entrance of women into any of the buildings, even including
the church. This rule remained unbroken during the tenth and eleventh
centuries, and even when in 1131 the Emperor Lothair went to Fulda to
celebrate Pentecost, his empress was not permitted to witness the
ceremonies. When Frederick Barbarossa, 1135, proposed to spend his
Easter there, he was not even allowed to enter the house because of having
his wife with him. In 1138 Boniface IX, at the request of the abbot, John
Merlow, relaxed the rule and permitted women to attend the services of the
church. Shortly afterwards the building was destroyed by lightning, which
was looked upon as evidence of the divine displeasure at the desecration.
The monastery of Athos under the Greek church, situated upon an island,
does not permit the entrance of a female animal upon its confines. Even in
America woman has met similar experience.[26]
At certain periods during the middle ages, conversation with women was
forbidden. During the Black Death, the Flaggellants, or Brotherhood of the
Cross, were under such interdict.[27] In this last decade of the XIX century,
the Catholic church still imposes similar restrictions upon certain religious
houses. Early in 1892 the queen-regent of Spain visited the monastery of
Mirzaflores; its rules not allowing a monk to speak to a woman, the queen
was received in silence. Her majesty immediately telegraphed to the pope
asking indulgence, which was granted, and during four hours the monks
were permitted the sin of speaking to a woman. It is curious to note that the
first sentence uttered by one of the monks was a compliment upon the
simplicity of her majesty’s attire. But the most impressive evidence of the
contempt of the church towards all things feminine was shown in a remark
by Tetzel the great middle-age dealer in indulgences. Offering one for sale
he declared it would insure eternal salvation even if the purchaser had
committed rape upon the mother of God.[28]
A knowledge of facts like these is necessary in order to a just understanding
of our present civilization, especially as to the origin of restrictive
legislation concerning woman. The civilization of today is built upon the
religious theories of the middle ages supplemented by advancing freedom
of thought. Lea, declares thus:

The Latin church is the great fact which dominates the history of
modern civilization. All other agencies which molded the destinies of
Europe were comparatively isolated or sporadic in their manifestations.
The influence of church teaching is most strikingly manifested in the
thought of today. Without predetermined intention of wrong doing, man has
been so molded by the Church doctrine of ages and the coordinate laws of
State as to have become blind to the justice of woman’s demand for
freedom such as he possesses. Nor is woman herself scarcely less bound,
although now torn by the spirit of rebellion which burned in the hearts of
her fore-mothers, so cruelly persecuted, so falsely judged, during past ages,
when the most devout Christian woman possessed no rights in the church,
the government or the family. The learning which had been hers in former
periods, was then interdicted as an especial element of evil. Her property
rights recognized in former periods then denied; as a being subordinate to
man she was not allowed a separate estate or control over the earnings of
her own hands. Her children were not her own but those of a master for
whose interest or pleasure she had given them birth. Without freedom of
thought or action, trained to consider herself secondary to a man, a being
who came into the world not as part of the great original plan of creation
but as an afterthought of her Creator, and this doctrine taught as one of the
most sacred mysteries of religion which to doubt was to insure her eternal
damnation, it is not strange that the great body of women are not now more
outspoken in demanding equal religious and governmental rights with man.
But another phase of heredity shows itself in the eagerness with which
women enter all phases of public life which does not place them in open
antagonism with Church or State. Education, industries, club life and even
those great modern and religious organizations which bring them before the
public, throwing active work and responsibility upon them, would be
entirely unexplainable were it not for the tendency of inherited thought to
ultimately manifest itself.
The long continued and powerfully repressing influence of church teaching
in regard to the created inferiority of women, imposed upon millions of men
and women a bondage of thought and action which even the growing
civilization of the nineteenth century has not yet been able to cast off. To
this doctrine we can trace all the irregularities which for many centuries
filled the church with shame; practices more obscene than those of Babylon

or Corinth dragged Christendom to a darkness blacker than the night of
heathendom in the most pagan countries—a darkness so intense that the
most searching efforts of the historian but now and then cast a ray of light
upon it;—a darkness so profound that in Europe from the seventh to the
eleventh centuries no individual thought can be traced, no opinion was
formed, no heresy arose. All Christendom was sunk in superstition.
Lange[29] says “The disappearance of ancient civilization in the early
centuries of the Christian era is an event the serious problems of which are
in great part still unexplained.” Had Lange not been influenced by the
subtle current of heredity which unwittingly influenced nations and systems
equally with individuals, he could easily have discovered the cause of this
disappearance of olden civilization, to be in the degradation of the feminine
element under Christianity. While this darkness of Christian Europe was so
great that history knows less of it a thousand years since than it does of
Egypt 5,000 years ago, one corner of that continent was kept luminous by
the brilliance of Mohammedan learning. The Arabs alone had books from
the eighth to the thirteenth centuries of the Christian era. The Moors of
Spain kept that portion of Europe bright, while all else was sunk in
darkness. Universities existed, learning was fostered and women authors
were numerous. For many hundred years Rome possessed no books but
missals and a few Bibles in the hands of priests. Men were bound by church
dogmas looking only for aggrandisement through her. The arts ceased to
flourish, science decayed, learning was looked upon as a disgrace to a
warrior,[30] the only occupation deemed worthy of the noble.
The priesthood who alone possessed a knowledge of letters, prostituted
their learning to the basest uses; the nobility when not engaged against a
common foe, spent their time battling against each other; the peasantry
were by turns the sport and victim of priest and noble, while woman was
the prey of all. Her person and her rights possessed no consideration except
as she could be made to advance the interest or serve the pleasure of priest,
noble, father, husband; some man-god to whose lightest desire all her
wishes were made to bend. The most pronounced doctrine of the church at
this period was that through woman sin had entered the world; that
woman’s whole tendency was towards evil, and had it not been for the
unfortunate oversight of her creation, man would then be dwelling in the
paradisal innocence and happiness of Eden, with death entirely unknown.

When the feminine was thus wholly proscribed, the night of moral and
spiritual degradation reached its greatest depth, and that condition ensued
which has alike been the wonder and the despair of the modern historians,
whose greatest fault, as Buckle shows, has been the reading of history from
a few isolated facts rather than building up its philosophy from an
aggregation of events upon many different planes.
Under all restrictions woman did not fail to show her innate power even
within the fold of the church. She founded devout orders,[31] established
and endowed religious institutions, and issued her commands to the pope
himself, in more than one instance seating that holy personage in the papal
chair.[32] From St. Paulina, whose life was written by St. Jerome, to the
promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin
Mary by the Ecumenical Council under Pius IX, and the later canonization
of Joan of Arc, woman has not failed to impress even the Christian world
with a sense of her intellectual and spiritual power. Yet despite the very
great influence exerted by so many women in the affairs of the church—
notwithstanding the canonization of so many women, she has only been
able to show her capacity at an immense expenditure of vital force against
constant priestly opposition and the powerful decrees of councils. Subtle
and complex as are the influences that mould thought and character, we
cannot comprehend the great injustice of the church towards woman in its
teaching of her mental and spiritual inferiority without a slight examination
of the great religious institutions that have been under her charge. Of these
none possess more remarkable history than the Abbey of Fontervault,[33]
founded in 1099, for both monks and nuns. It belonged in the general rank
of Benedictines, and was known as the Order of Fontervault. It was ruled by
an abbess under title of General of the Order, who was responsible to no
authority but that of the pope himself. Forming a long succession of able
women in thirty-two abbesses from the most eminent families of France,
woman’s capacity for the management of both ecclesiastical and civil
affairs was there shown for six hundred years. It was the abbess who alone
decided the religious fitness of either monk or nun seeking admission to the
order. It was the abbess who decreed all ecclesiastical and civil penalties;
who selected the confessors for the different houses of the order throughout
France and Spain; who managed and controlled the vast wealth belonging
to this institution; it was the abbess who drew up the rules for the

government of the order, and who also successfully defended these
privileges when attacked. For neither the protection of the pope, the wealth
of the order, or the family influence connected with it, prevented priestly
attack,[34] and no argument in favor of woman’s governing ability is
stronger than the fact that its abbesses ever successfully resisted these
priestly assaults upon the privileges of their order. The abbey of
Fontervault, with its grounds of forty or fifty acres, was surrounded by high
walls; its soil was tilled by the monks of the abbey, who received even their
food as alms from the nuns, returning all fragments for distribution to the
poor.[35]
The authority of women was supreme in all monasteries of the order. The
ecclesiastical power maintained by these abbesses is the more remarkable,
as it was in direct contravention of the dictates of the early councils, that of
Aix-la-Chapelle, 816, forbidding abbesses to give the veil or take upon
themselves any priestly function; the later council of Paris A.D. 824,
bitterly complained that women served at the altar, and even gave to people
the body and blood of Jesus Christ.
Among the convents controlled by women, which have largely influenced
religious thought, was that of the Paraclete in the 12th century under
Heloise. Its teachings that belief was dependent upon knowledge, attacked
the primal church tenet, that belief depends upon faith alone. The convent
of Port Royal des Champs during the 17th century exerted much influence.
Its abbess, the celebrated Mother Angelique Arnault, was inducted into this
office in her eleventh year upon death of her abbess-aunt whose co-adjutrix
she had been. This convent, both in person of the nuns as well as the monks
connected with it, became a protest against the jesuitical doctrine of the
seventeenth century, and like the Paraclete is intimately connected with
reform questions in the Catholic Church. Notwithstanding such evidences
of woman’s organizing mind and governing qualities under the most
favorable conditions, as well as of piety so unquestioned as to have
produced a long calendar of female saints, the real policy of the church
remained unchanged; nor could it be otherwise from its basis of woman’s
created inferiority and original sin. The denial to women of the right of
private judgment and the control of her own actions, the constant teaching
of her greater sinfulness and natural impurity, had a very depressing effect
upon the majority of women whose lowly station in life was such as to

deprive them of that independence of thought and action possible to women
of rank and wealth. Then, as now, the church catered to the possessors of
money and power; then, as now, seeking to unite their great forces with its
own purpose of aggrandizement, and thus the church has ever obstructed
the progress of humanity, delaying civilization and condemning the world
to a moral barbarism from which there is no escape except through
repudiation of its teaching. To the theory of “God the Father,” shorn of the
divine attribute of motherhood, is the world beholden for its most degrading
beliefs, its most infamous practices. Dependent upon the identified with lost
motherhood is the “Lost Name” of ancient writers and occultists. When the
femininity of the divine is once again acknowledged, the “Lost Name” will
be discovered and the holiness (wholeness) of divinity be manifested.[36]
As the theory of woman’s wickedness gathered force, her representative
place in the church lessened. From century to century restrictive canons
multiplied, and the clergy constantly grew more corrupt, although bearing
bad reputation at an early date.[37] Tertullian, whose heavy diatribes are to
be found in large libraries, was bitter in his opposition to marriage.[38]
While it took many hundreds of years for the total exclusion of woman
from the christian priesthood, the celibacy of the clergy during this period
was the constant effort of the Church. Even during the ages that priestly
marriage was permitted, celibates obtained a higher reputation for sanctity
and virtue than married priests, who infinitely more than celibates were
believed subject to infestation by demons.[39]
The restriction upon clerical marriages proceeded gradually. First the
superior holiness of the unmarried was taught together with their greater
freedom from infestation by demons. A single marriage only was next
allowed, and that with a woman who had never before entered the relation.
[40]
The Council of A.D. 347, consisting of twenty-one bishops, forbade the
ordination of those priests who had been twice married or whose wife had
been a widow.[41] A council of A.D. 395 ruled that a bishop who had
children after ordination should be excluded from the major orders. The
Council of A.D. 444, deposed Chelidonius, bishop of Besancon, for having
married a widow. The Council of Orleans, A.D. 511, consisting of thirty-
two bishops, decided that monks who married should be expelled from the
ecclesiastical order. The Church was termed the spouse of the priest. It was

declared that Peter possessed a wife before his conversion, but that he
forsook her and all worldly things after he became Christ’s, who established
chastity; priests were termed holy in proportion as they opposed marriage.
[42]
The unmarried among the laity who had never entered that relation, and
the married who forsook it, were regarded as saintly. So great was the
opposition to marriage that a layman who married a second time was
refused benediction and penance imposed.[43] A wife was termed “An
Unhallowed Thing.”
So far from celibacy producing chastity or purity of life, church restrictions
upon marriage led to the most debasing crimes, the most revolting vices, the
grossest immorality. As early as the fourth century (370) the state attempted
purification through a statute enacted by the emperors Valentinian, Valerius
and Gratian, prohibiting ecclesiastics and monks from entering the houses
of widows, single women living alone, or girls who had lost their parents.
[44]
The nearest ties of relationship proved ineffectual in protecting woman
from priestly assault, and incest became so common it was found necessary
to prohibit the residence of a priest’s mother or sister in his house.[45] This
restriction was renewed at various times through the ages. The
condemnation of the Council of Rome, Easter, 1051, under the pontificate
of Pope Leo IX, was not directed against married priests, but against those
who held incestuous relations. Yet although the Church thus externally set
her seal of disapprobation upon this vice, her general teaching sustained it.
Gregory, bishop of Venelli, convicted of this crime by the Council of Rome,
was punished by excommunication, but in a short time was restored to his
former important position. The highest legates were equally guilty with the
inferior priests. Cardinal John of Cremona, the pope’s legate to the Council
of Westminister 1125, sent by Pope Honorius for the express purpose of
enforcing celibacy, became publicly notorious and disgraced, and was
obliged to hastily leave England in consequence of his teaching and his
practice being diametrically opposed.[46]
Through this clerical contempt of marriage, the conditions of celibacy and
virginity were regarded as of the highest virtue. Jerome respected marriage
as chiefly valuable in that it gave virgins to the church, while Augustine in
acknowledging that marriage perpetuated the species, also contended that it
also perpetuated original sin.

These diverse views in regard to marriage created the most opposite
teaching from the church. By one class the demand to increase and multiply
was constantly brought up, and women were taught that the rearing of
children was their highest duty. The strangest sermons were sometimes
preached toward the enforcement of this command. Others taught an
entirely different duty for both men and women, and a large celibate class
was created under especial authority of the church. Women, especially those
of wealth, were constantly urged to take upon themselves the vow of
virginity, their property passing into possession of the church, thus helping
to build up priestly power. Another class held the touch of a woman to be a
contamination, and to avoid it holy men secluded themselves in caves and
forests.[47] Through numerous decretals confirmation was given to the
theory that woman was defiled through the physical peculiarities of her
being. Even her beauty was counted as an especial snare and temptation of
the devil for which in shame she ought to do continual penance.[48] St.
Chrysostom, whose prayer is repeated at every Sunday morning service of
the Episcopal church, described women as a “necessary evil, a natural
temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and
a painted ill.” But to escape her influence was impossible and celibacy led
to the most direful results. Monks and hermits acknowledged themselves
tormented in their solitary lives by visions of beautiful women. Monasteries
were visited by an illness to which celibacy imparted a name,[49] and
impurity of body and soul spread throughout Christendom. The general tone
of the church in regard to marriage; its creation of a double code of
morality; its teaching of woman’s greater sinfulness, together with that of
her absolute subordination to man, subverted the moral character of the
Christian world within whose borders the vilest systems of immorality
arose which the world has ever known; its extent being a subject of
historical record.[50]
According to the teaching of men who for many hundreds of years were
molders of human thought, priests, philosophers and physicians alike,
nature never designed to procreate woman, her intention being always to
produce men. These authorities asserted that nature never formed the
feminine except when she lost her true function and so produced the female
sex by chance or accident. Aristotle[51] whose philosophy was accepted by
the church and all teaching of a contrary character declared heretical,

maintained that nature did not form woman except when by reason of
imperfection of matter she could not obtain the sex which is perfect.[52]
Cajetan enunciated the same doctrine many hundred years later.[53] Aristotle
also denied creative power to the mother.[54] While throughout its history
the course of the Christian Church against marriage is constantly seen, no
less noticeable are the grossly immoral practices resulting from celibacy.
Scarcely a crime or a vice to which it did not give birth. Celibacy was
fostered in the interests of power, and in order to its more strict enforcement
barons were permitted to enslave the wives and children of married priests.
[55]
Those of Rome were bestowed upon the Cathedral church of the
Lateran, and bishops throughout Christendom were ordered to enforce this
law in their own dioceses and to seize the wives of priests for the benefit of
their churches. At no point of history do we more clearly note the influence
of the Church upon the State than in the union of the temporal power with
the ecclesiastical for purposes of constraining priestly celibacy.
Under reign of Philip I of France, a council was held at Troyes which
condemned the marriage of priests.[56] In 1108, the following year, King
Henry I of England[57] summoned a council to assemble in London for
purpose of upholding priestly celibacy, urging its enforcement upon the
bishops, and pledging his kingly honor in aid. A new series of canons was
promulgated, strengthened by severe penalties and the co-operation of the
king. Finding it impossible either through spiritual or temporal power to
compel absolute celibacy[58] the king for the benefit of his exchequer
established a license for concubinage upon the payment of a tax known as
cullagium.[59]
Notwithstanding all the powerful enginery of the church, priestly celibacy,
so contrary to nature, was not rendered absolutely imperative until the
thirteenth century. The Fourth Lateran Council (Twelfth Ecumenical), 1215,
under pope Innocent III, is especially famous because of its final settlement
of the policy of the church in regard to priestly marriage. This was a large
council, 1300 prelates taking part in the adjudication of this question. While
with St. Augustine acknowledging that marriage was requisite for the
preservation of the race, it strictly confined this relation to the laity.

The subject of celibacy as we see had agitated the church from its
foundation. A more renowned council even than the Twelfth Ecumenical,
namely, the First Nicene or Second Ecumenical, having seriously discussed
it, although after prolonged debate pronouncing against celibacy and in
favor of priestly marriage. St. Paphinutius, the martyr bishop of Thebes,
although himself a celibate advocated marriage which he declared to be true
chastity, the council adopting his opinion. Although the tendency of the
church for so many hundred years had been towards celibacy yet when
adopted as a dogma, a belief in its propriety or its scriptural authority was
by no means universal even among the most eminent members, but in no
instance has the control of the church over the consciences and will of its
adherents been more forcibly illustrated. Many illustrious and learned
theologians as Gratian the Canonist, St. Thomas Aquinas and Giraldus
Cambrensis, Arch-Deacon of St. Davids, while thereafter sustaining
celibacy as a law of the church declared it had neither scriptural nor
apostolic warrant; St. Thomas affirming it to be merely a law of human
ecclesiastical origin.[60]
Absolute celibacy of the priesthood proved very difficult of enforcement. At
the great council of London, 1237, twenty-three years afterwards, Cardinal
Otto deplored the fact that married men still received holy orders and held
office in the church, and in 1268 only fifty-three years after the great
council confirming celibacy as a doctrine of the church, another great
council was convened in London, when Cardinal Legate Ottoborn, the
direct representative of the Pope, demanded the establishment of
concubinage for priests. The institutions of Otto and Ottoborn long
remained the law of the English church. Yet to their honor be it remembered
that despite council and cardinal, pope and church, there were priests who
still persistently refused either to part from their wives or to relinquish their
priestly functions, and who when excommunicated for contumacy, laughed
at the sentence and continued their priestly offices.[61] Others sufficiently
conformed to the edicts to lock up their churches and suspend their priestly
administrations, yet refusing to part with their wives. The relatives of wives
also exerted their influence against the action of the church.
The struggle was bitter and long. New canons were promulgated and
celibacy enforced under severe penalties, or rather marriage was prohibited
under severe penalties. The holy robbery which made slaves of the wives

and children of priests confiscating their property to the church, had more
effect in compelling celibacy than all anathemas upon the iniquity of
marriage. Priests who retained their wives preferring the chastity of this
relation to the license allowed celibates, were prohibited from their offices
and their wives denounced as harlots. If this did not suffice, such priests
were finally excommunicated. But a way of return was left open. In case
this measure coerced them into abandoning wives and children, a short
penance soon restored the priestly rank with all its attendant dignities. Nor
was the re-instated priest compelled to live purely. So little was it expected
that the tax upon concubinage soon became a component part of the
celibate system. So gross and broadspread became the immorality of all
classes that even the Head of the Church pandered to it in the erection by
Pope Sixtus V of a magnificent building devoted to illicit pleasure.[62]
The example of Christ himself was pointed to in favor of celibacy, even
upon the cross saying to his mother, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”
The saints of the Old Testament as well as the New, were quoted as having
opposed marriage. Abel, Melchisedeck, Joshua, Elias, Jonah, Daniel, St.
John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. Paul with his disciples, and all
saintly personages were declared to have been celibates.
A concubinage tax was exacted from all the clergy without exception, and
rendered compulsory even upon those priests who still kept their wives, or
who lived chastely outside of the marital relation. Protests were of no avail.
Those whom disinclination, age or ill-health kept chaste, were told the
privilege of unchastity was open to them; the bishop must have the money
and after payment they were at liberty to keep concubines or not.[63] Under
concubinage the priest was free from all family responsibility; his mistress
possessed neither present nor future claim upon him; children, who
according to church teaching followed the condition of the mother, were
born to him, but for their education and maintenance neither ecclesiastical
nor civil law compelled him to provide.[64]
For many centuries this immoral tax brought enormous sums into the
treasuries of both Church and State. Although the laws against the marriage
of priests were enacted on pretense of the greater inherent wickedness of
woman, history proves their chief object to have been the keeping of all
priestly possessions under church control. It was openly asserted that the

temporal possessions of the church were imperilled by sacerdotal marriage,
and it has been declared with every proof of truthfulness that edicts against
the marriage of priests were promulgated to prevent the alienation of
property from the church.[65] The saying of Paul was quoted; “He that is
married careth for his wife, but he that is unmarried for the Lord.” Married
bishops were occasionally confirmed in their sees upon condition that their
wives and children should not inherit their property, which upon their death
should fall to the church.[66]
The struggle against the absolute celibacy of the priesthood was bitter. A
few priests still kept their benefices while retaining their wives and
acknowledging their children as legitimate. The sons of such contumacious
priests were declared forever incapable of taking holy orders, unless by a
special dispensation. The church showed almost equal determination in the
establishment of concubinage as in the enforcement of priestly celibacy,
each of these systems tending to its enrichment.
Opposition proved of no permanent avail. Holding control over the
conscience of men, asserting the power to unlock the doors of heaven and
hell, a strongly organized body working to one end, it is not a subject of
astonishment that the church, its chief object the crushing of body and soul,
should in the end prove conqueror, and the foulest crimes against woman
receive approval of the entire christian world. Many notable consequences
followed the final establishment of celibacy as a dogma of the church.
First: The doctrine of woman’s inherent wickedness and close fellowship
with Satan took on new strength.
Second: Canon Law gained full control of civil law.
Third: An organized system of debauchery arose under mask of priestly
infallibility.
Fourth: Auricular confession was confirmed as a dogma of the church.
Fifth: Prohibition of the Scriptures to the laity was enforced.
Sixth: Crime was more openly protected, the system of indulgences gained
new strength, becoming the means of great revenue to the church.

Seventh: Heresy was more broadly defined and more severely punished.
Eighth: The Inquisition was established.
When Innocent III completed the final destruction of sacerdotal marriage, it
was not upon disobedient priests the most severe punishment fell, but
innocent women and children.[67] Effort was made to force wives to desert
their husbands. Those who proved contumacious were denied christian
burial in an age when such denial was looked upon as equivalent to eternal
damnation; property left such wives was confiscated to the church; they
were forbidden the eucharist; churching after childbirth was denied them;
they were termed harlots and their children bastards, while to their sons all
office in the church was forbidden. If still contumacious they were handed
over to the secular power for condign punishment, or sold as slaves for the
benefit of the church. They were regarded as under the direct control of
Satan himself, as beings who iniquitously stood between their husbands and
heaven.
At numerous times in the history of the church women have been brought to
despair by its teachings, and large numbers driven to suicide. A similar
period was inaugurated by the confirmation of priestly celibacy. The wives
of such men, suddenly rendered homeless and with their children classed
among the vilest of earth, powerless and despairing, hundreds shortened
their agonies by death at their own hands. For all these crimes the church
alone is responsible.
Under celibacy, auricular confession, and extended belief in witchcraft, a
new era of wrong toward woman was inaugurated. From thenceforth her
condition was more degraded than even during the early centuries of
Christianity. Accusations of heresy, which included witchcraft as well as
other sins against the church were constantly made against that being who
was believed to have brought sin into the world. Whosoever dared question
the infallibility of the church by use of their own judgment, even upon the
most trivial subjects, immediately fell into condemnation.
Canon Law gaining full control over civil law, the absolute sinfulness of
divorce, which maintained by the church has yet been allowed by civil law,
was fully established. Woman was entirely at the mercy of man, the Canon
Law maintaining that the confession of a guilty woman could not be

received in evidence against her accomplice, although it held good against
herself[68] and the punishment due to both was made to fall on the woman
alone.[69] The best authorities prove that while the clergy were acquainted
with the civil codes that had governed the Roman Empire, they made but
little use of them.[70] Upon coming to the throne, Justinian[71] had repealed
the law of the Patriarchate which gave the father sole right and title to, and
interest in the children of legal marriage, but this was soon again subverted
by ecclesiasticism and under Canon Law a mother was prohibited all
authority over her child, its relationship to her even being denied. While
under Common Law children followed the condition of their fathers, who if
free transmitted freedom to their children, yet in the interests of priestly
celibacy, under church legislation, an entire reversal took place and children
were held to follow the condition of their mothers. Thus serf-mothers bore
serf-children to free-born fathers; slave mothers bore slave children to their
masters; while unmarried mothers bore bastard children to both priestly and
lay fathers, thus throwing the taint of illegitimacy upon the innocent child,
and the sole burden of its maintenance upon the mother. This portion of
Canon Law also became the law of the State in all Christian countries,[72]
and is in existence at the present time, both civil codes and statue laws
enforcing this great wrong of the Church.[73] The relations of men and
women to each other, the sinfulness of marriage and the license of illicit
relations for the priesthood, employed the thought of the church. The duty
of woman to obey, not alone her male relatives, but all men by virtue of
their sex, was sedulously inculcated. She was trained to hold her own
desires and even thoughts in abeyance to those of man, as to one who was
rightfully her master. Every holy principle of her nature was subverted by
this degrading assumption.
When auricular confession became confirmed as a dogma of the church, it
threw immense power over the family into the hands of the priesthood, a
power capable of being converted to many ends, but was specially notable
in its influence upon morals.[74] Although auricular confession was not
established as a dogma until the Council of 1215, it had been occasionally
practiced at early date, carrying with it the same immorality in lesser form
as that which afterwards became so great a reproach to the church.[75]
Through its means the priesthood gained possession of all family, social and
political secrets, thus acquiring information whose power for evil was

unlimited. The spirit of evil never found a more subtle method of
undermining and destroying human will, its most debasing influences
falling upon woman, who through fear of eternal damnation made known
her most secret thoughts to the confessor, an unmarried and frequently a
youthful man. It soon became a source of very great corruption to both
priest and woman.
Another effect of this council was the formal prohibition of the scriptures to
the laity, and thenceforth the Bible was confined to the priest who explained
its teachings in the interests of his own order, adding to, or taking from, to
suit his own interests; the recent new version showing many such
interpolations.[76] Nothing was held sacred by these men, who sacrificed
everything to their own advancement and that of their order.
The insolence of the priesthood was that of all periods; claiming direct
inspiration from God, they taught their own infallibility and in name of
Him, whom they professed to serve, the grossest crimes were perpetrated,
and this profession became a protecting sanctuary to men whose villainous
lives would otherwise have brought them to the gallows.[77]
With conviction of woman’s supreme wickedness, increased through the
formal recognition of celibacy as a dogma of the church, with the
establishment of auricular confession, and the denial of the Bible to the
laity, the persecution of woman for witchcraft took on new phase. The
belief that it was the ordinary method through which the devil won souls,
together with the persuasion that woman through her greater wickedness
fell more readily than men into such practices, acquired a firmer seat in
theology. Heresy, of which witchcraft was one phase, became a greater sin;
the inquisition arose, and the general characteristics of the christian world
rapidly grew more inimical to humanity, and especially to woman’s
freedom, happiness and security.
The influence of the church daily grew more unfavorable to all virtue; vice
was sustained, immorality dignified. The concubines of priests called
“wives,” in bitter mockery of that relation in which the legal wife was
termed concubine, were known as “The Hallowed Ones,” “The Honored
Ones.” No stigma attached to such a life; these women formed quite a class
in mediaeval society, themselves and their children out-ranking the wives of

ordinary laymen;[78] the touch of a priest had sanctified them. In the
estimation of the church an immoral life led with a priest was more
honorable than marriage with a layman, and all the obligations such a
relation implied. Priests assumed immunity from wrong doing. So far from
celibacy causing purity of life, through it the priesthood grew to look upon
themselves as especially set apart for indulgence in vice. Did not history so
faithfully portray this condition, it would seem impossible that it had
existed among people asserting the highest morality, and is proof of the
danger of irresponsible power to possessor and victim alike, and the ease
with which the true meaning of right and wrong is lost under such
circumstances.
The theory of the church that as the fall and sin really existed, priestly
immorality became a necessity in order to perpetuate the world even
through a continuance of the original sin, was a species of fine casuistry for
which the church in all ages has been remarkable. The general tenor of the
church against marriage, together with its teaching of woman’s greater
sinfulness, were the chief causes which undermined the morality of the
christian world for fifteen hundred years. With these doctrines were also
taught the duty of woman to sacrifice herself in every way for man, a theory
of which the present century is not unfamiliar. The loss of chastity in
woman was held as light sin in comparison to the degradation that marriage
would bring to a priest, and young girls ruined by some candidate or priest,
considered themselves doing God service in refusing a marriage that would
cause the expulsion of the priestly lover from the ecclesiastical order. With
woman’s so-called “divine,” but rather demoniac self-sacrifice, Heloise
chose to be deemed the mistress of Abelard rather than by acknowledging
their marriage destroy his prospects of advancement in the church.[79]
The State sustained the Church in its opposition to marriage, and we find
the anomaly of marriage for political reasons where the parties forever
separated at the altar. St. Jerome, and at a later date St. Dunstan, sustained
the policy of such marriages. The history of Britain gives instances of early
queens thus separating from their newly made husbands at the close of the
ceremony, dedicating their lives to celibacy and their fortunes to the church.
Nor did this institution neglect that large class of women to whom marriage
was made impossible because of the numbers of men to whom it was

forbidden. After the Lateran Council had permanently settled the action of
the church in favor of priestly celibacy, great effort was made to draw
women of wealth into a monastic life. Religion was the chief method of
acquiring power, and as an abbess of a religious institution it opened
opportunity for power to women scarcely possible outside the church. The
two highest womanly virtues inculcated by the church were a celibate life
and liberality to religious houses. It was taught if anything could possibly
mitigate women’s sin through Eve’s transgression, it was the observance of
these two conditions.
To the student this is the most remarkable period in the history of the
church, not merely as a culmination of the effort of centuries in finally
deciding the questions of celibacy, so long agitated with such varying
results, but in the immediate change and permanent settlement it brought
about in regard to other church dogmas, as well as its pronounced influence
in causing the Lutheran Reformation.
It was asserted that the spiritual office of the priest sanctified sin; it became
a maxim that whatever a priest might do was holy; by their taking part in
lasciviousness it became consecration. To disobey a priest was to endanger
salvation; it was libellous and treasonable to question the purity of a priest’s
motives, hence religion became a screen for all vice and a source of moral
degradation to all woman. To such extent was belief carried in the superior
purity of a celibate life that but little more than 300 years since a man was
burned at the stake in England for asserting the lawfulness of priestly
marriage.[80] The action of the council of 1215, so powerfully sustaining the
olden claims of the superior holiness of celibacy soon created a belief in the
inability of a priest to commit sin. During the middle ages his infallibility
was constantly maintained, his superior sanctity in consequence of his
celibacy universally asserted. It was impossible not to connect the idea of
great wickedness with those incapable of entering this holy office, and as
woman by virtue of sex was prohibited priestly functions, and as her
marriage had been declared a necessity for the world, these conditions were
used as arguments against her. The conscience and morality of tens of
thousands were destroyed by these teachings, enforced as they were by all
the dread authority of the church. The christian world was under entire
control of a class whose aim was chiefly that of personal aggrandizement,
and that hesitated at no means for securing wealth and power.

The Inquisition was firmly established; under its reign six hundred methods
of torture were known, and it was conducted with such secrecy that not
until dragged before it were many of its victims aware they were under
suspicion. Even when imprisoned in its torture chambers, the charges
against them were kept secret in hopes thereby to compel self-accusation
upon other points. The inferiority of woman, her proneness to evil and
readiness to listen to all suggestions of Satan, was taught with renewed
vigor and power for evil.
The priest regarded himself as the direct representative of divinity; the
theory of infallibility was not confined to the pope, but all dignitaries of the
church made the same claim. Asserting themselves incapable of wrong
doing, maintaining an especial sanctification by reason of their celibacy,
priests nevertheless made their holy office a cover for the most degrading
sensuality. Methods were taken to debauch the souls as well as the bodies of
women. Having first taught their special impurity, it was not maintained
that immorality with a priest was not sin, but on the contrary hallowed the
woman, giving her particular claim upon heaven. It was taught that sin
could only be killed through sin.[81] The very incarnation was used as a
means of weakening woman’s virtue. That Christ did not enter the world
through the marriage relation, stamped with christian honor a system of
concubinage in the church, for whose warrant woman was pointed to the
Virgin Mary. As an enforcement of her duty of absolute surrender of soul
and body to the will of the priest the course of the Virgin was adduced,
“who obeyed the angel Gabriel and conceived without fear of evil, for
impurity could not come of a spirit.”[82] The chastity of concubinage and
the unchasteness of marriage was constantly asserted by the church, and
thus the mysteries upon which its foundations were laid were used by it for
the degradation of woman, who was at all times depicted as a being of no
self-individuality, but one who had been created solely for man’s pleasure.
As late as the seventeenth century, it was taught that a priest could commit
no sin. This old doctrine took new strength from the Illumes, who claimed
an inner divine light.[83] We find reference to priestly immorality and claim
of infallibility among old writers, Boccaccio in many of his stories putting
arguments of this kind in the mouth of his priestly characters.[84]

It was asserted too that sin was of the body alone, the soul knowing
nothing, partaking nothing of it. As an argument in favor of woman’s
throwing herself entirely in the hands of priests for immoral purposes, it
was declared that, “The devout having offered up and annihilated their own
selves exist no longer but in God; thenceforth they can do no wrong. The
better part of them is so divine that it no longer knows what the other is
doing.”
In confirmation of this doctrine it was said that Jesus threw off his clothing
and was scourged naked before the people. The result of this teaching was
the almost universal immorality of christendom. Under such religious
doctrine it could but be expected that the laity would closely imitate the
priesthood. Europe became a continent of moral corruption, of which proof
is overwhelming. Could we but relegate christian immorality to the dark
ages we might somewhat palliate it under plea of ignorance. But
unfortunately for such claim ample proof is found to show that the
enlightenment of modern civilization has not yet been able to overthrow the
basic idea upon which this immorality rests. Amid the material and
intellectual advancement of the last hundred years we find spiritual
darkness still profound in the church and the true foundation of immorality
almost unrecognized.
As long as the church maintains the doctrine that woman was created
inferior to man, and brought sin into the world rendering the sacrilige of the
Son of God a necessity, just so long will the foundation of vice and crime of
every character remain. Not until the exact and permanent equality of
woman with man is recognized by the church, aye, even more, the greater
power and capacity of woman in the creative function, together with the
accountability of man to woman in everything relating to the birth of a new
being, is fully accepted as a law of nature, will vice and crime disappear
from the world. Until that time has fully come, prostitution in its varied
forms will continue to exist, together with alms-houses, reformatories, jails,
prisons, hospitals and asylums for the punishment, reformation or care of
the wretched beings who have come into existence with an inheritance of
disease and crime because of church theory and church teaching.
The system of celibacy produced its same effects wherever preached. So
constant was the system of debauchery practiced in England during the

reign of Henry VII that the gentlemen and farmers of Carnarvonshire laid
complaint against the clergy of systematically seducing their wives and
daughters.[85] Women were everywhere looked upon as slaves and toys, to
obey, to furnish pleasure and amusement, and to be cast aside at will. Under
the religious teaching of christendom it could not but be expected that the
laity would closely imitate the priesthood, and to victimize women became
the custom of all men.[86] When a priest failed to take a concubine his
parishoners compelled him to do so in order to preserve the chastity of their
own wives and daughters. Draper[87] tells us that in England alone 100,000
women became victims of the priests. Houses of vile character were
maintained for especial use of the priesthood. The marriage of a priest was
called a deception of the devil who thus led him into an adulterous
relation[88] for sake of alienating property from the church.
This mediaeval doctrine that sin can only be killed through sin, finds
expression today not alone in religion[89] but in society novels;[90] its origin,
like many other religious wrongs, being directly traceable to the teaching of
St. Paul.[91]
The incontinence of these celibate priests ultimately became so great a
source of scandal to the church that it was obliged to take action. Edicts and
bulls were fulminated from the papal chair, although the facts of history
prove Rome itself, its popes and its cardinals, to have been sunk in the
grossest immorality. Spain, the seat of the Inquisition, and at that period the
very heart of Christendom, was the first country toward which investigation
was turned, Pope Paul IV issuing a bull against those confessors who
solicited women, provoking them to dissolute action. When this bull of
investigation first appeared in Spain, it was accompanied by an edict
commanding all those who knew of monks or priests that had thus abused
the confessional to make it known within thirty days under grievous
penalty. The terrible power of the church intimidated those who otherwise
for very shame would surely have buried the guilt of their priests in
oblivion, and so great was the number of women who thronged the palace
of the Inquisition in the city of Seville alone, that twenty secretaries with as
many Inquisitors were not sufficient to take the deposition of the witnesses.
A second, a third and a fourth thirty days were appointed for investigation,
so great were the number of women making complaint.[92] So large a

number of priests were implicated that after a four months’ examination, the
Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition put a stop to the proceedings, commanding
that all those immoralities and crimes against womanhood only rendered
possible in the name of religion, and which has been proven by legal
evidence, should be buried in eternal oblivion. The deposition of thousands
of women seduced by their confessors, was not deemed sufficient evidence
for removal of the guilty priests from their holy offices. Occasionally a
single priest was suspended for a short time but in a few months restored
again to his priestly position.[93]
It was not uncommon for women to be openly carried off by priests, their
husbands and fathers threatened with vengeance in cases of their attempted
recovery.[94] During the height of the Inquisitorial power it was not rare for
a family to be aroused in the night by an ominous knock and the cry “The
Holy Fathers, open the door!”
To this dread mandate there could be but one reply, as both temporal and
spiritual power lay in their hands. A husband, father or son might thus be
seized by veiled figures; or as frequently a loved wife or young daughter
was dragged from her bed, her fate ever to remain a mystery. When young
and beautiful these women were taken to replenish the Inquisitional harem;
the “dry pan,” “boiling in oil,” and similar methods of torture, threatened, in
order to produce compliance upon part of wretched victims. No Turkish
seraglio with bow-string and sack ever exhibited as great an amount of
diabolical wickedness as the prison-harems of the Inquisition. As late as the
seventeenth century Pope Gregory XV commanded strict enforcement of
the bull against priestly lechery not alone in Spain, but in all other parts of
the Christian world. In England after the reformation, the same condition
was found to exist.[95] But edicts against lasciviousness were vainly issued
by a church whose foundation is a belief in the supremacy of one sex over
the other, and that woman brought sin into the world through having
seduced man into the marriage relation. Despite the advance of knowledge
and civilization the effects of such teachings are the same now as during the
middle ages, as fully proven at time of separation between the temporal and
spiritual power in Italy;[96] and these proofs are taken from Catholic
sources. In 1849 when the Roman people opened the palace of the
Inquisition there was found in the library a department entitled “Summary

of Solicitations,” being a record of cases in which women had been
solicited to acts of criminality by their confessors in the pontifical state.[97]
The testimony of Luther as to the moral degradation of the church at time of
the Reformation has never been invalidated,[98] and is entirely in accord
with its character throughout history.
That the same iniquities are connected with the confessional today, we learn
from the testimony of those priests who have withdrawn from the
communion of the Catholic Church; Father Hyacinthe publicly declaring
that ninety-nine out of one hundred priests live in sin with the women they
have destroyed. Another priest following the example of Father Hyacinthe
in marrying, asserted that he took this step in order to get out of the
ultramontane slough and remain an honest man.[99] That the Catholic
Church of the present day bears the same general character it did during the
middle ages is proven from much testimony. Among the latest and most
important witnesses, for minuteness and fullness of detail, is Rev. Charles
Chiniquy in his works “The Priest, The Woman and the Confessional,”
“Fifty Years of Rome,” etc. Now over eighty years of age, Rev. Mr.
Chiniquy was for more than fifty years a Catholic priest of influence and
high reputation, known in Canada, where thousands of drunkards reformed
under his teaching, as the “Apostle of Temperance.” Becoming convinced
of the immorality of the Romish Church, he left it in 1856, taking with him
five thousand French Canadians with whom he settled at St. Anne,
Kankakee County, Illinois. Having united with a branch of the Protestant
church, he was invited to Scotland to take part in the Tercentenary of the
Reformation, and later to England, where he lectured on invitation of
ministers of every evangelical denomination.[100] His “Fifty Years of
Rome” indissolubly links his name with that of Abraham Lincoln, through
the information there made known regarding the Catholic plot for President
Lincoln’s assassination.
It is as fully a law of moral as of material nature that from the same causes
the same effects follow. In his work upon the confessional[101] Rev. Mr.
Chiniquy relates incidents coming under his own personal knowledge while
he was still a catholic priest regarding its present abuses. The character of
the questions made a duty of the priest to ask during confession, are
debasing in the extreme, their whole tendency towards the undermining of

morality. Too broadly indelicate for translation these priestly instructions
are hidden in Latin, but are no less made the duty of a priest to understand
and use. In 1877, a number of prominent women of Montreal, Canada,
addressed a declaration and protest to the bishop of that diocese against the
abuses of the confessional of which their own experience had made them
cognizant.

DECLARATION

To His Lordship Bourget, Bishop of Montreal

Sir:—Since God in his infinite mercy has been pleased to show us the
errors of Rome, and has given us strength to abandon them to follow
Christ, we deem it our duty to say a word on the abominations of the
confessional. You well know that these abominations are of such a
nature that it is impossible for a woman to speak of them without a
blush. How is it that among civilized christian men one has so far
forgotten the rule of common decency as to force women to reveal to
unmarried men, under the pains of eternal damnation, their most secret
thoughts, their most sinful desires and their most private actions?
How unless there be a brazen mask on your priest’s face dare they go
out into the world having heard the tales of misery which cannot but
defile the hearing, and which the women cannot relate without having
laid aside modesty and all sense of shame. The harm would not be so
great should the Church allow no one but the woman to accuse herself.
But what shall we say of the abominable questions that are put to them
and which they must answer?
Here, the laws of common decency strictly forbid us to enter into
details. Suffice it to say, were husbands cognizant of one-tenth of what
is going on between the confessor and their wives, they would rather
see them dead than degraded to such a degree.
As for us, daughters and wives from Montreal who have known by
experience the filth of the confessional, we cannot sufficiently bless
God for having shown us the error of our ways in teaching us that it was
not at the feet of a man as weak and as sinful as ourselves, but at the
feet of Christ alone that we must seek salvation.
Julia Herbert,
Marie Rogers,
J. Rocham,
Louise Picard,
Francoise Dirringer,
Eugenie Martin, and
forty-three others.[102]

In reply to a letter of inquiry addressed by myself to Rev. Mr. Chiniquy, the
following answer was received.
St. Anne, Kankakee County, Illinois
January 4, 1887
Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Madam
In answer to your honored letter of the 29th Dec. I hasten to say: First.
The women of Montreal signed the declaration you see in ‘The Priest,
the Woman and the Confessional,’ in the fall of 1877. I do not
remember the day. Second. As it is ten years since I left Montreal to
come to my Missionary field of Illinois, I could not say if these women
are still in Montreal or not. Great, supreme efforts were secretly made
by the Bishop of Montreal to show that these names were forged in
order to answer and confound me, but the poor Bishop found that the
document was too correct, authentic and public to be answered and
attacked, and he remained mute and confounded, for many of these
women were well known in the city.
Third. You will find the answer to your other questions, in the volume
‘Fifty Years in the Church of Rome,’ which I addressed you by today’s
mail.
Respectfully yours in Christ,
C. Chiniquy
The same assertion of priestly infallibility is made today as it was centuries
ago, the same declaration of change of nature through priestly celibacy.
Upon this question Mr. Chiniquy says:
If any one wants to hear an eloquent oration let him go where the
Roman Catholic priest is preaching on the divine institution of auricular
confession.
They make the people believe that the vow of perpetual chastity
changes their nature, turns them into angels and puts them above the
common faults of the fallen children of Adam. With a brazen face when
they are interrogated on that subject, they say that they have special

graces to remain pure and undefiled in the midst of the greatest dangers;
that the Virgin Mary to whom they are consecrated is their powerful
advocate to obtain from her son that superhuman virtue of Chastity; that
what would be a cause of sin and perdition to common men is without
peril and danger for a true son of Mary.[103]
A work entitled “Mysteries of the Neapolitan Convents,” its author
Henrietta Carracciola, a woman of the purest blood of the princes of Italy,
daughter of the Marshal Carracciola, Governor of the Province of Pasi in
Italy, is quoted from, by Rev. Mr. Chiniquy, in confirmation of his
statements as to the continued impurity of the confessional.
Finally another priest, the most annoying of all for his obstinate
assiduity, sought to secure my affections at all cost. There was not an
image profane poetry could afford him, nor a sophism he could borrow
from rhetoric, no wily interpretation he could give to the word of God,
which he did not employ to convert me to his wishes. Here is an
example of his logic:—
“Dear daughter,” said he to me one day, “knowest thou who thy God
truly is?”
“He is the Creator of the Universe,” I answered dryly.
“No-no-no-no! that is not enough,” he replied laughing at my
ignorance; “God is Love, but love in the abstract which receives its
incarnation in the mutual affection of two hearts which idolize each
other. You must then not only love God in the abstract existence, but
must also love him in his incarnation, that is, in the exclusive love of a
man who adores you. Quod Deus est amor nec colitus nisi amando.”
“Then,” I replied, “a woman who adores her own lover would adore
Divinity itself?” “Assuredly,” reiterated the priest over and over again,
taking courage from my remark and chuckling with what seemed to him
the effect of his catechism.
“In that case,” said I hastily, “I should select for my lover rather a man
of the world than a priest.”

“God preserve you, my daughter! God preserve you from that sin. To
love a man of the world, a sinner, a wretch, an unbeliever, an infidel!
Why, you would go immediately to hell. The love of a priest is a sacred
love, while that of a profane man is infamy. The priest purifies his
affections daily in communion with the Holy Spirit.... If you cannot love
me because I am your confessor, I will find means to assist you to get
rid of your scruples. We will place the name of Jesus Christ before all
our affectionate demonstrations and thus our love will be a grateful
offering to the Lord and will ascend fragrant with perfume to Heaven
like the smoke of the incense of the Sanctuary. Say to me for example ‘I
love you in Jesus Christ, last night I dreamed of you in Jesus Christ,’
and you will have tranquil conscience, because in doing this God will
sanctify every transport of your love.”
Rev. Mr. Chiniquy who in his fifty years of Romish priesthood possessed
every opportunity for knowing the truth, does not hesitate to affirm that the
popes are today of the same general immoral character they were in the
earlier centuries of the Church. He says:
Let not my readers be deceived by the idea that the popes of Rome in
our days are much better than those of the ninth, tenth, eleventh and
twelfth centuries. They are absolutely the same—the only difference is
that today they take a little more care to conceal their secret orgies. Go
to Italy and there the Roman Catholics themselves will show you the
two beautiful daughters whom the late Pope Pius IX had from two of
his mistresses. Inquire from those who have personally known Pope
Gregory XVI the predecessor of Pius IX; after they will have given you
the history of his mistresses, one of whom was the wife of his barber,
they will tell you that he was one of the greatest drunkards in Italy.[104]
The views of the Catholic Church in regard to marriage of the priesthood
was recently demonstrated in the United States, 1885, by the persecution of
a priest of the Uniate Greek Church sent as a missionary from Austria to
Pennsylvania. The Greek Church, it must be remembered, permits a single
marriage to a priest. The Uniate while in this respect following the
discipline of the Greek Church, yet admits the supremacy of the Pope which
the regular Greek Church does not. The Uniate Greek Church accepts, as
binding, all the decisions of Rome subsequent to the division between the

eastern and the western parts of christendom. Endowed with authority from
both branches, Father Wolonski came to this country accompanied by his
wife, in full expectation of fellowship with his catholic brethren. His first
contrary experience occurred in Philadelphia when Archbishop Ryan of the
Cathedral refused all intercourse with him because of his marriage.
Reaching Shenandoah where commissioned by his own Austrian Bishop, he
discovered himself still under ban; the resident priest of the catholic church
having warned his congregation under pain of excommunication to shun
both himself and his church, upon the ground that the Roman Church under
no circumstances tolerated a married priest. Eventually the subject grew to
such proportions that Father Wolonski was recalled, and an unmarried priest
sent in his stead.[105]
From the experience of Father Wolonski less than a decade since, with the
bitter hostility shown by the church towards Father Hyacinthe, we find that
a belief in the special holiness of celibacy is as dominant in the Catholic
church today as at any period of its history; concurrent testimony teaching
us that its greatest evils remain the same as of old. It is less than twenty
years since the whole christian world was interested in a suit brought
against the heirs of the deceased Cardinal Antonelli in order to secure
recognition of his daughter’s claim to inheritance. This girl was everywhere
spoken of by the Catholic Church as “a sacrilegious child,” that is, a being
who had violated sacred things by coming into existence. The destruction of
her mother’s life, her own illegitimacy, the wrong done to her mother’s
family and to society were held as of no moment beside the fact that her
claims, if allowed, would take property from the church. The love of the
Great Cardinal for this girl’s mother was fully proven, but the church
having established celibacy in order that it might control the property of its
priests, was not inclined to permit any portion to be diverted from that
source. Honesty, justice, and the ties of natural affection, now as of yore are
not part of the Church system. In consequence, this suit of the illegitimate
child of the Great Cardinal Secretary, filled not alone Italy, but the whole
Catholic world with disgrace.
Among the countries now striving to free themselves from Church
dominion is Mexico. A letter to the New York Herald, winter of 1892,
regarding the revolution there in progress, said of Diaz:

Instead of his being assisted by the Church it has been his bitterest and
most relentless enemy and opponent. The Church in Mexico is opposed
to all enlightenment of the people. The clergy, if they can be honored
with that name, fight all improvements. They want no railways or
telegraphs and when he adopted a system of compulsory education the
war began in earnest. Diaz was determined, however, and he retaliated
by closing up the convents and prohibiting the establishment of
monasteries. Being further opposed in his efforts at reform and defied
by the priests he put hundreds of them in Pueblo in jail and prohibited
the ringing of Church bells in certain localities. He forcibly impressed
on them the fact that he was running Mexico, not they. He gave them to
understand that his idea of Christianity was, that priests should preach
Christ crucified and not revolution and infraction of the laws.
In Mexico, priests can keep mistresses with impunity. From a church to
a gambling-table is but a step, and the priests gamble with the rest. The
rentals of houses of ill-fame, of gambling-houses, of bull-pens all go to
a church which is supposed to teach religion. Because Diaz, a catholic
himself, will not tolerate such crimes under the guise of religion he is
fought by the church and is the recipient of their anathemas.
Take the leading church in Monterey outside of the cathedral. You step
from the church-door to a plaza owned by the church and in which
stand fifty tents in which are conducted monte, roulette and other games
of chance. Behind this stand the bull-pen, and the profits and rentals go
to the Church.
With all these lights the most plausible inference or theory is that the
clerical party, as they see all these privileges being swept away, will
cheerfully contribute the sinews of war with which to carry on a
revolution against Diaz. They have agents in Europe and the money can
come through that source without detection.
The agent of the Clerical Party in Europe is the Church itself. As a body, it
has ever opposed advancement and reform. It anathematized the printing
press as an invention of the devil and has steadily opposed education of the
people. Its work is best done in the darkness of ignorance and superstition.
For this cause it has opposed all new discoveries in science, all reforms of

whatever character.[106] Not by the Catholic Church alone, but under the
“Reformation,” as we have seen, the same prohibition of the Bible to
common people, has existed the same resistance to education of the masses,
the same opposition to antislavery, to temperance, to woman’s demand for
equality of opportunity with man. The general nature of the church does not
change with change of name. Looking backward through history we even
find the same characteristics under the patriarchate; love of power, greed for
money, and intense selfishness combined in a general disregard for the
rights of others.
M. Renan’s drama, “L’Abbesse de Jouarre,” was written because he wished
to prove the worthlessness of those vows imposed on catholic priests and
nuns, as well as show the bondage under which they held the feminine
conscience, while the masculine conscience throws them aside. It is not
alone the nuns whose conscience is bound, but all feminine members of the
catholic church are more closely held in a spiritual bondage, than the male
members of that church. In 1885, a letter from Chili to the New York Sun
graphically pictured certain Chilian women penitents who are known by a
peculiar dress they are required to wear.[107] Others whose sins are so great
that they cannot be purged by a penitential dress, retire for a season to the
“Convent of Penitents,” where by mortification of the body they hope to
gain absolution for the soul. Still more severe than this retreat are other
convents known as “Houses of Detention,” where wayward daughters are
sent, and young mothers without husbands are cared for. But the whole
country of Chili fails to show a similar dress, or house of penitence, or
correction for men. Shame and penance, equally with sin, have been
relegated by the church to women alone.
The confessional is not frequented by men, and mass is but seldom attended
by them. For this laxity a double reason exists: First, immorality in men is
not looked upon as contrary to its discipline. Second, through woman
having been trained to a more sensitive conscience than man, the
confessional wrests secrets from her lips, which gives the church
knowledge of all it wishes to learn in regard to the family. No more certain
system could have been devised for the destruction of woman’s self-respect
than the one requiring penance from her for sins the church passes lightly
over in man. Nor would penance of this character be demanded from
women were the offices of the church open to her the same as to man. No

greater crime against humanity has ever been known than the division of
morality into two codes, the strict for woman, the lax for man. Nor has
woman been the sole sufferer from this creation of Two Moral Codes within
the Christian Church. Through it man has lost fine discrimination between
good and evil, and the Church itself as the originator of this distinction in
sin upon the trend of sex, has become the creator and sustainer of injustice,
falsehood and the crimes into which its priests have most deeply sunk. Nor
is this condition of the past. As late as the fall of 1892 a number of articles
appeared in Canadian papers openly accusing the catholic priesthood of that
province of the grossest immorality.[108] That priestly celibacy yet continues
in the Romish Church is not a subject of surprise, when we realize the
immense power and wealth it has been enabled to secure through its means;
but it is one of astonishment, carrying with it a premonition of danger, that
we now see a similar tendency in the ritualistic portion of the Episcopal
Church, both in England and the United States. The evils of monasticism,
although less potent than during the middle ages, are still great, and in
finding entrance into Protestant denominations are a fresh warning of their
dangerous tendency. The experience of the past should not appeal to us in
vain. We have noticed the perils to society arising from those classes of
persons who, under plea of religion, evade the duties of family and social
life. No crime against the world can be greater than the deliberate
divestment of responsibility by one’s self, because tired of the warfare of
life, that struggle which comes to every human being; the becoming
“fascinated with the conceptions of an existence” outside of ordinary cares;
and the entrance into an order in which one’s own personal responsibility is
largely surrendered to others is not alone a crime against the state, but a sin
against one’s own self and against humanity. An order which thereafter
assumes the task of directing the thoughts and lives of its members into a
channel of “repose and contentment” as certain protestant orders do, is one
of the dangerous religious elements of the present day. No crime against
one’s self or against society can be greater than this. In the Ritualistic
Episcopal Church are to be found monks and sisterhoods upon the celibate
plan, confessors and penance, all of them primal elements in moral and
spiritual degradation. If religion has a lesson to teach mankind, it is that of
personal responsibility; it is that of the worth and duty of the individual; it
is that each human being is alone accountable for his or her course in life; it
is the lesson of the absolute equality of each human being with every other

human being in relation to these cardinal points. The lesson should have
been learned ere this, that ecclesiastical pretense of divinely appointed
power has ever made the priesthood arrogant, coarse and tyrannical; the
male laity dependent and dissimulating; woman, self-distrustful and
timorous, believing in the duty of humiliation and self-sacrifice; that her life
is not to be lived primarily for herself alone, but that her very right to
existence is dependent upon the benefit thereby to accrue to some other
person. Today, as of old, the underlying idea of monasticism, of
“brotherhoods,” “sisterhoods,” and their ilk even in Protestant
denominations, is the divine authority of some priestly superior, and that the
power of remitting sins inheres in some system under control of some
priest. The Ritualistic party of the Episcopal Church, equally with the
Roman Catholic Church, makes frequent reference to these words of Christ
—St. John XX, XXIII—“Whatever sins you remit they are remitted unto
them, and whatsoever sins you retain are retained,” thus premising the
divine power of the priesthood.

Chapter Three

Canon Law

The earliest Saxon laws were almost entirely ecclesiastical,[1] their basis
seeming to have been payment of tithes to the Church and support of the
pope through what was known as the “hearth penny” to St. Peter. Marriage
was by no means allowed to escape general ecclesiastical control, its
legitimacy being made to depend upon the sanction and services of a priest.
[2]
This we learn from Reeves, whose authority is indisputable,[3] therefore
we discover that even long before marriage was constituted one of the
sacraments, celibacy or the confessional established, the Church had
perceived the great increase in its authority to be brought about by gaining
control of the marriage ceremony and making its legitimacy depend upon
the services of a priest. This was a material step towards the subjugation of
mankind; one whose dire consequences have not yet received due
consideration. When Rome became a Christian State, and the phallic cross
triumphed over the gods and goddesses of old, the condition of woman
under the civil law became more degraded. The change from ancient
civilization to that renewed barbarism at an early age of the Christian era,
which so many writers note without perceiving its cause, is to be found in
the low conception of womanhood inculcated by the Church. Ignorance,
superstition, falsehood and forgery united in creating new codes of law, new
customs of society, new habits of thought, which, having for centuries been
imposed upon mankind by the united force of the Church and the State, still
continue their impress upon modern life and law.
Among general canons we find that “No woman may approach the altar.”
“A woman may not baptize without extreme necessity.” “Woman may not
receive the Eucharist under a black veil.” “Woman may not receive the
Eucharist in morbo suo menstrule.”

At the Synod or Council of Elvira,[4] 305 or 306, several restrictive canons
were formulated against woman. Under Canon 81, she was forbidden to

write in her own name to lay christians, but only in the name of her
husband. Women were not to receive letters of friendship from any one
addressed only to themselves.
From the commencement of the fifth century, the Christian clergy acquired
a powerful influence in Rome. Bishops and priests were the municipal
magistrates of the Roman Empire, of which little now remained except its
municipal government; thus the Church in reality became Rome, and Rome
the Church. It has been declared difficult to fix with precision the period at
which ecclesiastics first began to claim exemption from civil jurisdiction.
The Synod of Paris, 615, seems to have secured to the clergy the privilege
of being brought before mixed tribunals in all cases which had theretofore
belonged to the civil judge alone. Bishops acquired greater power from
having an oversight over the whole administration of justice committed to
them, while their spiritual judgments were rendered more effective by the
addition of excommunication to civil punishments. The State, at first
holding repression over the Church, added to its powers by relieving the
clergy from all civil duties,[5] thus tending to make of them a body exterior
to the civil government. This division was farther increased through the
emperors giving confirmation to the decisions pronounced by bishops in
ecclesiastical affairs, and also when they were chosen umpires in civil suits;
the tendency of this action was towards the creation of an ecclesiastical law
with separate powers from the civil law. Another step towards the
separation of civil from ecclesiastical law and the supremacy of the latter,
was made when in cases of discipline the clergy were allowed to come
under the authority and supervision of the Spiritual Courts.[6]
As soon as Christianity became the religion of the State, this power was still
farther increased by the permission accorded ecclesiastics to accept gifts,
inherit and hold property; the purity of clerical motives being thereby
greatly lessened, as covetous and unscrupulous persons were forthwith
attracted to this profession. The law of tithes was introduced by
Charlemagne, and his edicts largely increased clerical power. The
compilation of a Code of Canon Law was begun as early as the ninth
century,[7] by which period the olden acknowledged rights of the clergy,
those of superintending morals and interference on behalf of the
unfortunate, had largely been lost sight of, or diverted from their proper

course by a system of ecclesiastical tyranny which created an order of
morals, whose sole design was that of building up priestly power.
The complete inferiority and subordination of the female sex was
maintained both by civil and common law. It was a principle of common
law that sons should be admitted to an inheritance before daughters.[8] This
distinction created by the Church in the interests of the class which was
alone admitted to the priesthood, thus placing the possession of wealth in
the hands of man, did much towards keeping woman in a subordinate
condition. In accordance with natural law, the person not owning property is
less interested in the welfare of the State than the one possessing it, a denial
of the rights of ownership acting prejudicially upon the individual.

Ecclesiastical or Canon Law[9] made its greatest encroachments at the
period when Chivalry[10] was at its height; the outward show of respect and
honor to woman under chivalry keeping pace in its false pretence with the
destruction of her legal rights. The general conception in regard to woman
was so degraded at this period that a “Community of Women” was
proposed, to whom all men should act in the relation of husbands.[11] This
plan was advocated by Jean de Meung, the “Poet of Chivalry,” in his
famous Roman de la Rose. Christine of Pisa, a woman of learning and
remarkable force of character, the first strictly literary woman of western
Europe, wrote a work in defense of her sex against the general libidinous
character of the age.[12] Her opposition to the debasing theories of the
“Romance” marks the later period of woman’s entrance into literature, and
is an era from which dates the modern intellectual development of Europe.
[13]
Efforts to utterly crush the moral rectitude of women through the
adoption of those base ideas of phallic origin, having been the systematic
course of the Church, the State and society through many hundred years, it
is a most notable proof of her innate disbelief in this teaching, that woman’s
first literary work of modern times was written in opposition to such a
powerfully sustained theory as to her innate depravity. Christine asserted
the common humanity of woman, entirely repudiating the sensual ideas of
the times.
To the credit of mankind it must be recorded that the laity did not
unresistingly yield to priestly power, but made many attempts to take their

temporal concerns from under priestly control. But under the general
paucity of education, and the abnegation of the will so sedulously
inculcated by the Church as the supreme duty of the laity, its dread power
brought to bear in the enforcement of its teaching by terrifying threats of
excommunication and future eternal torment, the rights of even the male
portion of the people were gradually lost. The control of the priesthood over
all things of a temporal as well as of a spiritual nature, tended to make them
a distinct body from the laity. In pursuance of its aims for universal
dominion, the Church saw the necessity of assuming control of temporal
affairs. Rights were divided into those pertaining to persons and things; the
rights of persons belonged to the priesthood alone, but inasmuch as every
man, whatever his condition, could become a priest, and no woman
however learned or pious or high in station could be admitted to its ranks,
the whole tendency of ecclesiastical law was to divide mankind into a holy
or divine sex, and an unholy or impious one.[14] Thus Canon Law still
farther separated those whose interests were the same, creating an
antagonism in the minds of all men against all women, which bearing upon
all business of ordinary life between men and women, fell with its greatest
weight upon women. It corrupted the Common Law of England, and
perverted the civil codes of other nations. Under Canon Law wives were
deprived of the control of both person and property, while sisters were not
allowed to inherit with brothers; property, according to old ecclesiastical
language, going “to the worthiest of blood.” Blackstone acknowledges that
this distinction between brothers and sisters reflects shame upon England,
and was no part of the old Roman law, under which the children of a family
inherited equally without distinction of sex.[15] It was as late as 1879 before
the Canon Law in regard to the sole inheritance of sons was repealed in one
of the Swiss Cantons. The influence of this law in creating selfishness was
manifested by the opposition it met, brothers piteously asserting ruin to
themselves by this act of justice to their sisters. Whenever the Canon Law is
analyzed it is found destructive to the higher moral sentiments of humanity.
A woman was prohibited the priesthood, and as the property of men
entering orders became forfeited to the Church, the real intent of this law—
that of obtaining control of property—which otherwise might have escaped
the grasping hand of the church, is easily discernible. From its first theory
of woman’s inferiority to its last struggle for power at the present day, the
influence and action of the Patriarchate is clearly seen. The touch of the

Church upon family life, inheritance and education, increased the power of
the Patriarchate.
As celibacy proved a lucrative method of bringing wealth into its coffers, so
marriage was early made a source of revenue to the Church, Canon Law
creating it a sacrament to be performed at the church door. Owing, however,
to the innate sinfulness of marriage, this sacrament was not for many years
allowed to take place within the sacred building dedicated to God, and
deemed too holy to permit the entrance of a woman within its sacred walls
at certain periods of her life. In order to secure full control of this relation
marriage unblessed by a priest was declared to be concubinage, and carried
with it deprivation of church privileges, which the ignorance of the people
held to be of vital importance. In entering this relation the wife was
compelled to relinquish her name, her property, the control of her person,
her own sacred individuality, and to promise obedience to her husband in all
things. Certain hours of the day to suit the convenience of priests were set
aside as canonical, after which time no marriage could be celebrated.
Nor has this priestly control of marriage been confined to the Catholics
alone. Similar laws were extant after the Reformation. In England 1603,
Canon 62 instituted that under penalty of suspension people could not
marry except between the hours of eight and twelve in the forenoon, nor
was marriage then allowed in any private place but must be performed at
the church door.[16] The rapid growth of the Canon Law in England must be
ascribed to avarice; the denial to wives of any right of property in the
marital union being an example. At this period Canon Law began to take
cognizance of crimes, establishing an equivalent in money for every species
of wrong doing. The Church not only remitted penalty for crimes already
committed, but sold indulgences for the commission of new ones. Its touch
soon extended to all relations of life. Marriages within the seventh degree
were forbidden by the Church as incestuous,[17] but to those able to pay for
such indulgences a dispensation for such “incestuous” marriage was readily
granted. No crime so great it could not be condoned for money. Thus
through Canon Law was seen the anomaly of legal marriage between the
laity pronounced concubinage, while the concubines of priests were termed
“wives.” As soon as the legality of marriage was made dependent upon
priestly sanction the door of gross immorality was widely opened.[18] All

restrictions connected with this relation were made to fall with heaviest
weight upon woman. Husbands were secured the right of separation for
causes not freeing wives; even the adultery of the husband was not deemed
sufficient cause unless he brought his mistress into the same house with his
wife.[19] Church and State sustained each other. Conviction of the husband
for a capital crime gave the wife no release from the marriage bond, yet in
case of the husband’s treason, his innocent wife and children were robbed
of all share in the estate of the criminal husband and father and were
reduced to beggary, his estate escheating to the State. As under civil law so
under ecclesiastical, the Church recognized but slight difference in the guilt
of a contumacious husband and that of his pious wife and children.[20] It
was a principle of the Church that the innocent must suffer for the guilty,
especially when the innocent were women and children powerless to aid
themselves. At its every step Canon Law injured woman. The clergy
assuming to be an order of spiritual beings, claimed immunity from civil
law and allowed for themselves an “arrest of judgment” ultimately enlarged
so as to include all male persons who could read and write. This arrest
known as “benefit of clergy” was denied to all women, who were liable to
sentence of death for the first crime of simple larceny, bigamy, etc.[21] Men
who by virtue of sex could become priests if able to read, were for the same
crimes punished by simple branding in the hand, or a few months
imprisonment, while a woman was drawn and burned alive. Did not history
furnish much proof of this character it would be impossible to believe that
such barbaric injustice was part of English law down to the end of the
eighteenth century. Woman first rendered ineligible to the priesthood, was
then punished for this ineligibility.
Blackstone recognizes as among the remarkable legal events of the
kingdom, the great alteration in the laws through the separation of
ecclesiastical courts from the civil. Matrimonial causes, or injuries
respecting the rights of marriage are recognized by him as quite an
undisturbed branch of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, from the Church having so
early converted this contract into a sacramental ordinance.[22] During many
centuries education was denied to woman in Christian countries for reasons
connected with her ineligibility to the priesthood. The art of reading is by
scholars believed to have been one of the ancient mysteries taught at
Eleusis and other olden temples; learning, then, as at later periods, was in

the hands of priests; therefore the fact of being able to read was
synonymous with the right of entering the priesthood. This right
appertained to women in many ancient nations even under the Patriarchate.
Higgins shows that the word Liber from which our words liberty, freedom,
are derived, is one and the same as liber, a book, and had close connection
with the intellectual, literary, and priestly class. As under Christian doctrine
the priesthood was denied to woman, so under the same rule learning was
prohibited to her.[23] To permit woman’s education under Christianity would
have been a virtual concession of her right to the priesthood. In not
allowing her “benefit of clergy” the priests were but consistent with
themselves and their pretensions as to the superior holiness of the male sex.
That a woman should be burned alive for a crime whose only punishment
for a man was a few months imprisonment, was in unison with the whole
teaching of the Christian Church regarding woman. Under Canon Law
many of the shields theretofore thrown about women were removed.
Punishment for crimes against them lessened, while crimes committed by
them were more severely punished. Rape, which in early English history
was termed felony, its penalty, death, was regarded in a less heinous light
under clerical rule.
Under the political constitutions of the Saxons, bishops had seats in the
national council and all laws were prefaced by a formal declaration of their
consent. By their influence it became a general law that a woman could
never take of an inheritance with a man, unless perhaps by the particular
and ancient customs of some cities or towns; while daughters at a father’s
death could be left totally unprovided for. A law was enacted in the reign of
Edward VI that no son should be passed over in his father’s will unless
disinherited in plain terms and a just cause given. In case of daughters, sex
was deemed “a just cause” for leaving them in poverty. The earlier laws of
the Danish Knut, or Canute, show that the estate was then divided among
all the children. Under Canon Law, the testimony of a woman was not
received in a court of justice. She was depicted by the Church as the source
of all evil, the mother of every ill.[24] Legislation had the apparent aim of
freeing the clergy from all responsibility to the civil or moral law, and
placing the weight of every sin or crime upon woman.
A council at Tivoli in the Soisonnais, A.D. 909, presided over by twelve
bishops, promulgated a Canon requiring the oath of seven persons to

convict a priest with having lived with a woman; if their oath failed of
clearing him he was allowed to justify himself upon his sole oath. Under
Canon Law a woman could not bring an accusation unless prosecuted for an
injury done to herself. It is less than thirty years since this law was extant in
Scotland; and as late as 1878, that through the influence of Signor Morelli,
the Italian Parliament repealed the old restriction existant in that country
regarding woman’s testimony. Under Canon Law a woman could not be
witness in ecclesiastical or criminal suits, nor attest a will.[25] To cast doubts
upon a person’s word is indicative of the most supreme contempt, importing
discredit to the whole character. That a woman was not allowed to attest a
will, nor become a witness in ecclesiastical suits, implied great degradation
and is a very strong proof of the low esteem in which woman was held both
by State and Church. That a priest could clear himself upon his own
unsubstantiated oath is equally significative of the respect in which this
office was held, as well as showing the degree in which all law was made to
shield man and degrade woman. When we find the oath of seven women
required to nullify that of one layman, we need no stronger testimony as to
woman’s inequality before the law. Canonists laid down the law for all
matters of a temporal nature whether civil or criminal. The buying and
selling of lands; leasing, mortgaging, contracts; the descent of inheritance;
the prosecution and punishment of murder; theft; detection of thieves;
frauds; those and many other objects of temporal jurisdiction were provided
for by Canon Law. It was intended that the clergy should come entirely
under its action, governed as a distinct people from the laity. The principal
efforts of the Canon Law towards which all its enactments tended, was the
subordination of woman[26] and the elevation of the hierarchy. To secure
these two ends the church did not hesitate at forgery. For many hundred
years a collection of Decretals, or what were claimed as decrees of the early
popes, carried great authority, although later investigation has proven them
forgeries.[27] Civil as well as ecclesiastical laws were forged in the interest
of the priesthood; a noted instance, was the once famous law of Constantine
which endowed bishops with unlimited power, giving them jurisdiction in
all kinds of causes. This law declared that whatever is determined by the
judgment of bishops shall always be held as sacred and venerable, and that
in all kinds of causes whether they are tried according to the pastoral or
civil law that it is law to be forever observed by all.

The famous Seldon known as the “Light of England,” declares it to have
been “a prodigious and monstrous jurisdiction” assumed by the priestly
order, by means of falsehood and forgery.[28] The two classes of temporal
affairs that Spiritual Courts especially endeavored to appropriate, were
marriages, and wills, with everything bearing upon them. In these the
greatest oppression fell upon women.[29] Canon Law gradually acquired
enormous power through the control it gained over wills, the guardianship
of orphans, marriage, and divorce.[30] As soon as ecclesiastical courts were
divided from the temporal in England,[31] a new set of principles and
maxims began to prevail. This was one of the first effects of the Conquest,
but in 1272, Robert Kilmandy, Dean of Canterbury, gave directions for the
restoration and observation of the ancient and neglected laws of
Ecclesiastical Courts; of these the Court of Arches was one of the most
ancient. It is almost impossible to fix the date of ecclesiastical rule, unless
indeed we go back to the very foundation of the church. As noted, the early
Saxons were largely governed by their priests. In 615, at the Paris synod,
the clergy were given authority in matters theretofore under civil power,
while in England we find priestly power to have been great during the
fourth and fifth centuries. Bracton sets the one hundred and fifty years
between the middle of the twelfth and end of the thirteenth centuries as the
period when this power took its greatest strides. At this time it touched upon
wills, inheritance, bequests, the legitimacy of children, the marriage
relation, and all family concerns, having broken over many securities of the
common law. This period covers the establishment of celibacy with the
trains of evils noted in the preceding chapter, when the marriage of priests
was declared invalid, their wives branded as immoral persons, and stain of
illegitimacy thrown upon their children. Despite the guarantees of the
Runnymede Charter, and the religious rebellion of the Eighth Henry, despite
the vigor of Elizabeth who bent both priest and prelate to her fiery will, the
influence of this period moved down in line with the Reformation, and to
the injury of woman, successfully incorporated its worst features into the
common law; the new church, social and family life all partaking of this
injustice. A great number of canons were enacted after the reformation.
These, together with the foreign canons which had been adopted, were held
as part of the law of England.[32] The Episcopal church appropriated
numerous canons extant at the time of the reformation, several of these

having been created for the purpose of sustaining the church at a period
when the temporal power threatened encroachment. The archdeacon of
Surrey prepared a voluminous work upon this subject known as the Jurus,
[33]
proving that these canons, decrees, etc., when falling into disuse had
been established by act of Parliament, as part of the law of England. The
preface of his work declared that it had been prepared purely for the service
of the clergy, and in support of the rights and privileges of the Church. Thus
we have direct proof of the adoption of papal decrees as part of the
government of the Protestant Episcopal church,—the Anglican—and also as
part of English law.
An act of Parliament at this age was regarded as synonymous with a law of
God. The Bible and the English government were upon the same plane,
each to be implicitly obeyed.[34] Canon Law thus firmly established by act
of Parliament, the union of Church and State complete, England lost much
of that civil freedom whose origin can be traced to the wise legislation and
love of freedom inhering in two British queens, Martia and Boadicea.
Suffering from cruel wrong, the latter rose in revolt against the Romans.
Riding among the squadrons of her army she thus addressed them:
It will not be the first time, Britons, that you have been victorious under
the conduct of your queen. I come not here as one of royal blood, to
fight for empire or riches, but as one of the common people to avenge
the loss of their liberty, the wrongs of myself and my children. If you
Britons will but consider the motives of our war, you will resolve to
conquer or die. Is it not much better to fall in the defense of liberty than
to be exposed to the outrages of the Romans? Such at least is my
resolution, you may if you please live and be slaves.
But many historians date the entire subordination of the common law to
ecclesiasticism, to the reign of Stephen, who ascended to the throne 1135,
the fourth of the Anglo-Norman kings. In order to keep the ranks of the
church full, the bearing of children was enforced upon women as a religious
duty. No condition of health or distaste for motherhood was admitted as
exemption. Alike from the altar, the confessional, and at the marital
ceremony,[35] was this duty taught, nor has such instruction even under the
light of physiology and new regard for personal rights, yet ceased.[36] No
less is the unresisting subjection of women in this relation indirectly or

directly enforced by the Protestant and the Greek churches as the law of the
Bible and God. “Increase and multiply”[37] has been the first commandment
for woman, held as far more binding upon her than the “Ten Words” of
Mount Sinai. Proof exists in abundance of a character impossible to present
in this work.
Under the general absence of learning and the equally general reverence for
whatever emanated from the church, minor ecclesiastics found it in their
power to promulgate doctrines to suit every new set of circumstances; thus
many laws aside from regularly promulgated canons, came from time to
time into force. When once applied they assumed all the power of custom
and soon bore all the force of common law. The evils of ecclesiastical law
were soon increased through the unsparing use of forgery and falsehood.
Lea says:
In the remodeling of European Institutions, so necessary to the interests
of Christianity and civilization, one of the most efficient agencies was
the collection of Canons known as the False Decretals. Forgery was by
no means a novel expedient to the church. From the earliest times
orthodox and heretics had rivalled each other in the manufacture of
whatever documents were necessary to substantiate their respective
positions whether in faith or discipline. An examination of these
Decretals tends to the conclusion that they were not the result of one
effort or the work of one man. Their constant repetitions and their
frequent contradiction would seem to prove this, and to show that they
were manufactured from time to time to meet the exigencies of the
moment or to gratify the feelings of the writers. Interpolated into codes
of law, adopted and amplified in the canons of councils and the
decretals of popes, they speedily became part of the civil and
ecclesiastical policy of Europe, leaving traces on the constitutions
which they afflicted for centuries.... The pretenses and privileges which
they conferred on the hierarchy became the most dearly prized and
frequently quoted portions of the Canon Law. In each struggle with the
temporal authority, it was the arsenal from which were drawn the most
effective weapons, and after each struggle the sacerdotal combatants
had higher vantage ground for the ensuing conflict ... theories of
ecclesiastical superiority which left so profound an impress on the

middle ages and which have in no slight degree molded our modern
civilization.
Even Magna Charta strengthened Canon Law, confirming many liberties of
the Church, and injuring women by prohibiting appeal to them unless for
the death of their husbands. While the general tenor of the church was
against marriage, an unmarried woman unless dedicating her life to the
church was regarded with more contempt than the married. To be under
control of a husband was looked upon as the normal condition of women
not living celibate lives. Consequently women were driven into marriage or
monastic houses,[38] and no reproach so great as the term “old maid.” The
influence of custom is nowhere more discernible than in Blackstone
himself. The great commentator while fully admitting the blending of
Canon with Common law, also acknowledging its most prejudicial effects
to have fallen upon woman, yet attempts to prove that the liberties of the
English people were not infringed through ecclesiasticism. He is so entirely
permeated with the church doctrine of woman’s created inferiority as not to
be willing to acknowledge the infringement of her natural liberty through it,
although at the same time he declares that “whosoever would fully
understand the Canon Law must study Common Law in respect to woman.”
Such benumbing of the moral faculties through her doctrines is among the
greatest wrongs perpetrated by the church upon mankind. Nor is it alone in
regard to woman. During the Franco-Prussian war a writer declared the
great and absolute need of the French people to be education; that of moral
character there was absolutely none, either in the higher or lower classes.
Even the sons of aristocratic families educated in Jesuit schools, being at
most taught that wrong can only be measured by a formal religious
standard, and that every wrong can be wiped out by confession to the priest.
French education, this writer declared to be that of two centuries ago, when
might was looked upon as identical with justice. Nor can morality be taught
while its basis in the church remains the same.
The priestly profession held the most brilliant promises of gratified
ambition to every man that entered it. Not alone did he possess the keys of
heaven and hell, but also those of temporal power. The laity were his
obedient servants upon which he could impose penance and from whose
coffers wealth could be made to flow into his own. Through long continued
false teaching the people believed their fate in both worlds more fully

depended upon the priesthood than upon their own course in life, God
having deputed a share of his power to every priest and monk, no matter
how debased; and that when he spoke it was not himself, but God, through
his lips, as asserted by the priesthood themselves. This impious assertion so
capable as shown of being used for the most tyrannous purposes, came also
into the Reformation, and is even heard from the lips of Protestant
clergymen today.[39] Denied recognition of a right to decide for themselves
whether the priest spoke from God, or from his own ambitious and
iniquitous purposes, deprived of education as well as of free thought—the
latter a crime to be punished with death after the most diabolical torture—it
is not a subject of surprise that the majority of the christian world was a
prey to the vilest superstition. The claim of infallibility, which may be
unsuccessfully combated when urged by a single individual, became all-
potent when advanced by a large powerfully organized and widely
distributed class under guise of religion, into which the element of fear
largely entered. No salvation outside of the church was a fundamental
doctrine of that body. Hell was declared not to be peopled alone by the
heathen, but by christian heretics, and the excommunicated who had died
without obtaining forgiveness from the Church. These were depicted as in
eternal torments of a more terrible character than even those whom birth
had left ignorant of the plan of salvation. The strength of the church lay in
its control of the conscience and the will. Upon the State it fastened double
bonds; first, by its control of each individual member; second, in its
capacity of secular ruler. Long before the days of Torquemada and
Ximenes, the Inquisition had practically been brought to every man’s door.
The imagination, that faculty that in its perfection constitutes the happiness
of mankind, was made the implement of excessive mental torture.
Common Law as it exists today is the outgrowth of Ecclesiastical or Canon
Law touching upon all the relations of life but falling with heaviest weight
upon woman, as Blackstone so frankly admits.[40] From the X to the XVI
centuries is the period when the features of the Canon Law most derogatory
to woman became thoroughly incorporated into English common law, since
which period the complete inferiority and subordination of woman has been
as fully maintained by the State as by the Church.
Common Law is not alone English law, it is the basic law of the United
States. Chancellor Kent said of it, “Common Law is part of the fundamental

law of the United States.” It has been recognized and adopted as one entire
system by the constitutions of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and
Maryland. It has been assumed by courts of justice, or declared by statute,
as the law of the land in every State, although its influence upon the
criminal codes of England and the United States has but recently attracted
the attention of legal minds. Wharton whose Criminal Law has been for
years a standard work, did not examine this relation until its seventh
edition. In the preface to this edition he gave a copious array of authors in
English, German, Latin, in proof that the criminal codes of those two
countries are permanently based upon Ecclesiastical Law.
An early council of Carthage thus ordained: “Let not a woman however
learned or holy presume to teach a man in a public assembly.” To this
Canon may be ascribed the obstacles thrown in the way of women even
during the present century, who have come before the world as public
teachers in the pulpit, at the bar, in medicine, or the more customary
branches of instruction. Advancing civilization of the present century is still
hampered by the laws of an imperfect church, enacted many hundred years
since. The trial of Mistress Anne Hutchinson in New England, during the
XVII century, was chiefly for the sin of having taught men.
All modern legislation can be referred to the church for its origin although
most especially noticeable in reference to women legislated for as a class,
distinct and separate from men. Under Church laws, the humble, the
ignorant, the helpless have been the most oppressed, because of their
powerlessness, but upon no part of humanity has this oppression so heavily
fallen as upon her whom the church has declared to be the author of all the
misery of human life.[41] The laws of bastardy and illegitimacy still extant
in Christian countries which decree that a child born outside of marriage
shall be known by its mother’s name and she alone responsible for its
support, and which do not allow it to inherit its putative father’s property
even when he acknowledges the child as his own, are of ecclesiastical
origin. Enacted by the Church in its most powerful days, as protection to a
celibate priesthood against all claim by mother or child, they are still a
reminder of the Matriarchate when the sole right of the mother to the child
was unquestioned. But under Church ruling this law that the child should
follow the condition of the mother, herself but a slave, was the source of
great injustice both to women and to thousands of innocent children. Under

feudalism and during slavery the child of the feudal lord or powerful master
by a serf woman, became at birth subject to all the restrictions of the mother
while the father was freed from accountability of any nature. The Antonelli
case referred to in the second chapter, in which the Countess Lambertini
claimed heirship of Cardinal Antonelli’s property as his daughter, was
decided against her not upon denial of her paternity which was most fully
proven, but because under church law this daughter had no claim upon her
priestly father. Under Canon Law she was no more to be regarded as his
child than as the child of any other man. She was “fatherless.” She was “a
sacrilegious child” having violated sacred things by coming into existence.
Her “holy” father under Canon Law was entirely irresponsible for her birth.
[42]

The reformation proved itself in many ways as restrictive towards woman
as Catholicism. The commencement of modern law dates to the reign of
Elizabeth, who established the reformation upon a firm basis. The
oppression of her reign exceeded all that had been experienced under
Catholicism. No cottager in England was permitted to shelter his homeless
mother or sister under penalty[43] because she was “masterless.” The
greatest amount of legislation both religious and secular under the
Patriarchate has had woman for its object, and this is especially noticeable
in all countries where Christianity has been the dominant power, because
she has not been regarded by the church as a component part of humanity,
but as an offshoot whose rights and responsibility were entirely different
from those of man. Although among the Anglo-Saxons the priesthood
possessed great influence yet after the Norman Conquest ecclesiasticism
gained much greater control in England, and Canon Law began to influence
legislation, as has been shown, exercising its chief restrictive force upon
woman. While under old Common Law,[44] a husband was compelled to
leave his wife one-third of his property and could leave her as much more
as he pleased, by Canon Law he was prohibited from leaving her more than
one-third and could leave her as much less as he pleased. Thus
ecclesiasticism presumed to control a husband’s affections and placing its
slimy fingers upon common law, allowed the husband to leave his wife in
absolute poverty, notwithstanding that her property upon marriage, and her
services under marriage, belonged exclusively to him. As early as the
twelfth century, Glanville laid it down as a law of the British Kingdom that

no one was compelled to leave another person any portion of his property,
and that the part usually devised to wives was left them at the dictate of
affection and not of law. Thus early did the Church in England override
Common Law to the detriment of woman. While thus legislating in
opposition to family rights, the church continually favored its own increase
of its own property.[45] The world has produced no system so thoroughly
calculated to extend its own power and wealth, as this vast celibate
organization which, under the guise of religion, appealed to man’s
superstition, and ruled his will under the assumption of divine authority, the
family being its chief objective point of attack.
While under feudalism his lord was to receive the best gift at the villein’s
death, the church the second best, in time the demands of the church
overpowered those of the lord, as well as those of the family. So rapacious
did the church at last become in its demand for valuable gifts and its claim
of one third of a man’s property upon his decease, that the civil law
ultimately interfered, not however in the interests of wives, but of creditors.
Canon Law nearly everywhere prevailed, having its largest growth through
the pious fiction of woman’s created inferiority. Wherever it became the
basis of legislation, the laws of succession and inheritance, and those in
regard to children, constantly sacrificed the interests of wives and daughters
to those of husbands and sons. Church legislation created numerous and
stringent enactments which rendered it impossible for woman to succeed to
any considerable amount of property, forcing her to entire dependence upon
man, either as a wife, or as a resident of a religious house; thus she entirely
lost the freedom possessed by her in pagan Rome.[46]
While under Canon Law the dower of the wife was forfeited by attainder of
the husband, yet the husband did not lose his right to the wife’s property in
case she was attainted of treason. Under Canon Law if for recognized just
cause of the husband’s cruelty the wife separated from him, she was
returned upon his demand provided he gave security for treating her well.
Canon Law gave to the husband the power of compelling the wife’s return
if, for any cause, she left him. She was then at once in the position of an
outlaw, branded as a runaway who had left her master’s service, a wife who
had left “bed and board” without consent, and whom all persons were
forbidden “to harbor” or shelter “under penalty of the law.” The absconding

wife was in the position of an excommunicate from the Catholic Church, or
of a woman condemned as a witch. Any person befriending her was held
accessory to the wife’s theft of herself from her husband, and rendered
liable to fine and other punishment for having helped to rob the husband
(master) of his wife (slave). The present formula of advertising a wife,
which so frequently disgraces the press, is due to this belief in wife-
ownership.
Whereas my wife ... has left my bed and board without just cause or
provocation, I hereby forbid all persons from harboring or trusting her
on my account.
By old English law, in case the wife was in danger of perishing in a storm,
it was allowable “to harbor” and shelter her. It is less than fifty years since
the dockets of a court in New York city, the great metropolis of the United
States, were sullied by the suit of a husband against parties who had
received, “harbored” and sheltered his wife after she left him, the husband
recovering a0,000 damages.
In losing control, upon marriage, of her person and her property, woman’s
condition became that of an infant. No act of hers was of legal value. If she
made a bargain her husband could repudiate it and the person with whom
she had contracted was held to have taken part in a fraud. The denial under
Common Law of her right to make a contract grew out of the denial of her
right of ownership. Not possessing control of her inheritance or of her
future actions, she was consequently held unable to make a binding
contract.[47] Forbidden the right of acting for herself; deprived of the
ownership and control of her own property or earnings, woman had little
opportunity to prove her business capacity. Since the time of Aristotle the
control of property has been recognized as the basis of social and
responsible conditions. The great school of German jurists[48] teach that
ownership increases both physical and moral capacity, and that as owner,
actual, or possible, man is a more capable and worthy being than he would
otherwise be.
Inasmuch as through both the ecclesiastical and civil laws of Christendom,
woman was debarred from giving testimony in courts of law; sisters
prohibited from sharing a patrimony with brothers; wives deprived of

property rights both of inheritance and earnings, it is entirely justifiable to
say that even the boasted Common Law, that pride of English speaking
peoples, has greatly injured civilization through its destruction of woman’s
property rights. Canon or Church laws were enacted upon the principle of
protection for men alone and upon these civil laws gradually became
wholly based. Herbert Spencer[49] has not failed to recognize this fact in
England. No less in law than in religion is woman dealt with as a secondary
being, for whom equal religious rights or equal civil rights are not designed.
While under the Matriarchate justice and purity prevailed, and the inherent
rights of man were preserved, we find an entirely contrary condition under
the Patriarchate, that system enacting laws solely with intent to man’s
interest regardless alike of mother, sister, wife or daughter. The entire
destruction under Canon and civil law, of woman’s property rights, has not
alone lessened her responsibility, but has also diminished her self-respect.
As in common with a child, or a slave, her business agreements were held
as of no binding force, she ultimately came to regard herself as incapable of
business transactions. In England until a very recent date, and in the United
States until when in 1839, Mississippi first placed the control of her own
property in a married woman’s hands (to be followed in 1848, by
Pennsylvania, New York, and about the same period by Rhode Island), it
was in the husband’s power in every part of christian Europe and America,
to repudiate any bargain, sale or gift made by the wife as of no binding legal
force, and this, even though she had brought the entire property into the
marital firm.[50] Therefore under Christian laws the person with whom the
wife made a contract, or to whom she made a gift was held as a criminal, or
participant in a fraud. The wife under Canon Law belonged to the husband,
and as a sequence to not owning herself she could not own property, and in
her condition of servitude could possess no control over either her present
or her future actions. Such is Common Law warped and changed by Canon
Law.[51]
Property is a delicate test of the condition of a nation. It is a remarkable fact
in history that the rights of property have everywhere been recognized
before the rights of person. The American Revolution arose from an attack
upon property rights and although the Declaration of Independence
assumed the rights of person to be primal, this unique foundation for a
system of government has not yet fully been admitted in practice, and

woman is still denied its advantages and responsibilities. While the property
owner unwittingly becomes a hostage for the security of the state itself, it
needs governmental recognition of the rights of person, in order to create
firm self-reliance and a feeling of strength and freedom. A proper self-
respect cannot inhere in any person under governmental control of others.
Unless the person so governed constantly maintains a system of rebellion in
thought or deed, the soul gradually becomes debased, and the finest
principles of human nature suffer a rapid process of disintegration. The
integrity of elementary principles disappears, bad citizenship results, the
general rights of humanity are ignored, selfish, personal, or family interests
taking their place. Good citizenship requires individual personal
responsibility in affairs of the state.
That property rather than person still receives recognition in governmental
matters, owes its origin to the period when the rights of the common people
in both property and person were ignored. The effort of the peasant was
chiefly directed to securing property. To his clouded vision, the wealth of
the lord created his power, and to a great extent such was the fact.
Intuitively he felt that property rights were the basis of the rights of persons.
The Church possessed enormous wealth, as did all his oppressors, and the
peasant could but see that control of rights of property was a dangerous
assault upon their rights of person. The foremost element of all slavery is
the denial to the slave of right to the proceeds of his own labor. As soon as a
colored slave in the United States, was permitted to hire his time, the door
of freedom began to open for him. Thus when Canon Law so influenced
Civil and Common Law that it forbade woman’s inheritance and ownership
of property, it placed its final touch upon her degradation; she virtually
became a slave to her husband. Sir Henry Maine is outspoken in declaring
that Christianity has thus deeply injured civilization, an injury from which
he asserts there can be no recovery as long as society remains christian. As
a man of profound thought he does not fail to see that the prevailing
religious sentiment created by the teachings of the church as to woman’s
created inferiority and subjection to man, was the cause of that destruction
of her property rights. The priests of pagan Rome held juster view regarding
woman than did the Christian Church. Before the establishment of
Christianity they had conferred the rights of woman to property; daughters
inherited equally with sons. To such extent was woman’s rights of property

carried that at one period, as has been heretofore stated, the greater part of
the real-estate of the empire was in woman’s possession.[52] The slavish
condition of woman greatly increased through denial of her rights of
inheritance, was more fully established through denial to her of the fruits of
her own labor in the marriage relation. Under church law the wife was the
husband’s personal slave, all her time was absolutely his. Civil and
ecclesiastical law held her as completely under his authority. Her property,
her person, her time and services were all at the husband’s disposal. Nor did
the Reformation effect a change in this respect. Luther’s ninety Theses
nailed against the church door in Wittemberg did not assert woman’s natural
or religious equality with man. It was a maxim of his that “no gown or
garment worse became a woman than that she will be wise.” The home
under the reformation was governed by the laws in force before that period.
First: She was to be under obedience to the masculine head of the
household.
Second: She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.
Third: Her society was strictly chosen for her by her master and responsible
head.
Fourth: This masculine family head was regarded as a general father-
confessor to whom she was held as responsible in word and deed.
Fifth: Neither genius nor talent could free women from such control without
his consent.
The Cromwellian period while exhibiting an increase of piety brought no
amelioration to woman. The old Church doctrine of her having caused the
expulsion of men from Paradise was still proclaimed from the pulpit, and
warnings against her extreme sinfulness lost none of their invective strength
from the lips of the new gospel. All kinds of learning and accomplishments
for her fell under new reprobation and the old teaching as to her iniquities
and the necessity for her to feel shame from the fact of her existence took
new force after the rise of Melancthon, Huss, and Luther.[53] About this
period it was said “she that knoweth how to compound a pudding is more
desirable than she who skilfully compoundeth a poem.”[54] Men thought it
no shame to devote themselves to the pleasure of the table. Epicures and

gluttons abounded, but to women was forbidden a seat at the world’s
intellectual board; she who secured learning did so at the peril of her social
and religious position. Under no other system of religion has there been
such absolute denial of woman’s right to directly approach the divinity;
under no other religious system has her debasement been greater.[55]
It cannot be asserted that the religious system teaching restrictive moral and
civil laws regarding woman, is of the past. Its still great living influence is
shown by the thousands of pilgrims who visited Italy during the Pope’s
Jubilee and the presents of incalculable value that by tens of thousands
poured into the papal treasury in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary
of the entrance of Pope Leo XIII into the priesthood. These were received
from almost every civilized nation, Christian, Mohammedan, Catholic,
Protestant. Even the President of the United States, head of a form of
government which recognizes religion as entirely disconnected with the
State, so far catered to superstition, so far conceded the assumptions of this
system, as to send an elegant copy of the Federal Constitution to the Pope,
through Cardinal Gibbons.[56] No stronger proof is required of the still
powerful influence of that system based upon the degradation of woman,
than the fact that the President of the United States, temporary head of a
nation professedly based upon a recognition of equal civil, political and
religious rights; the Queen of England head of the Anglican Church; the
Sultan of Turkey representative of Mohammedanism; Sadogara, the
celebrated Rabbi of Vienna, known as the “Pope of the Hebrews,” were all
found among the number of persons outside of Catholicism who by gifts
recognized this occasion. It was but ten years previously that Pope Pius IX
celebrated his jubilee entrance into the Episcopal office with great pomp
and ceremony, but the jubilee of Leo XIII exceeded in splendor and popular
interest anything of the kind ever before known as the history of the church.
With a religious clientele of 200,000,000 behind him, and the ten thousand
magnificent testimonials as to the justice of his claim as vicar of Jesus
Christ, the world cannot fail to be impressed by the danger to human liberty
still connected with this powerful organization; an organization that in its
control of human thought and human will has ever been of incalculable
injury to mankind. Portions of the daily press saw the continuing danger,
declaring that:

These facts are truly impressive indicating as they do the tremendous
hold which the Roman ecclesiastical system has gained over the hearts
and minds of men. Very striking, too, is the contrast between all this
magnificence and pomp and manifest aspiration for temporal power on
the part of one who claims to be the representative on earth of the
“meek and lowly Jesus,” and the poverty, unostentation and self-denial
of the “Son of Man,” who had not where to lay his head.
This jubilee is an event of great moment to the XIX century, at once a
warning and a proof of the life and strength of that scheme which has for its
real end, not alone the spiritual but also the temporal subjugation of the
entire human race. Since Italy under King Humbert secured its release from
the temporal power, thus severing the last authoritative grasp of the pope
upon temporal kingdoms, the attempt has been sedulously made to create a
fictitious sympathy for the pope under claim of his imprisonment in the
Vatican. Nor at the least supreme moment of his pride and glorification did
the pope forget to call attention of the world to his temporal claims, by a
refusal to receive the offered gifts of the king and queen who occupy the
worldly throne he maintains to be especially his own.[57]
The doctrine of original sin and woman as the original sinner, transplanted
from Judaism into Christianity by Paul in the statement that “Adam, first
created, was not first in sin,” was developed to its present evil proportions
by the early Christian Fathers. To St. Augustine, whose youth was spent in
company with the most degraded of womankind, is the world indebted for
the full development of the doctrine of original sin. Taught as one of the
most sacred mysteries of religion, which to doubt or to question was to
hazard eternal damnation, it at once exerted a most powerful and repressing
influence upon woman, fastening upon her a bondage which the civilization
of the nineteenth century has not been able to cast off.
Reverence for the ancient in customs, habits of life, law, religion, is the
strongest and most pernicious obstacle to advancing civilization. To this
doctrine of woman’s created inferiority[58] and original sin we can trace
those irregularities which for many centuries filled the Church with shame,
for practices more obscene than the orgies of Babylon or Corinth, and
which dragged Christendom to a darkness blacker than the night of
heathendom in pagan countries—a darkness upon which the most searching

efforts of historians cast scarcely one ray of light—a darkness so profound
that from the seventh to the eleventh century no individual thought can be
traced.
Rev. Charles Kingsley, a canon of the English Church, declared that from
the third to the fifteenth centuries, Christianity had been swamped by
hysteria in the practice of all those nameless orgies which made a by-word
of Corinth during the first century. Every evil was traced to woman. A
curious old black letter volume published in London, 1632, declares that
“the reason why women have no control in Parliament, why they make no
laws, consent to none, abrogate none, is their original sin.”

Chapter Four

Marquette

The minds of people having been corrupted through centuries by the
doctrines of the Church in regard to woman, it became an easy step for the
State to aid in her degradation. The system of feudalism arising from the
theory that warfare was the normal condition of man, still oppressed woman
by bringing into power a class of men accustomed to deeds of violence,
who found their chief pleasure in the sufferings of others. To be a woman
appealed to no instinct of tenderness in this class. To be a woman was not to
be protected unless such woman held power in her own right, or acted in
place of some feudal lord. The whole body of villeins and serfs were under
absolute dominion of the feudal lords. They were regarded as possessing no
rights of their own; the priests had control of their souls, the lord, of their
bodies. But it was not upon the male serfs that the greatest oppression fell.
Although the tillage of the soil, the care of swine and cattle was theirs, the
masters claiming half or more of everything, even to one-half of the wool
shorn from the flock,[1] and all exactions upon them were great while their
sense of security was slight, it was upon their wives and daughters that the
greatest outrages were inflicted. It was a pastime of the castle retainers to
fall upon peaceful villages, to the consternation of the women, who were
struck, tortured, and made the sport of ribald soldiers.[2] “Serfs of the body,”
they had no protection. The vilest outrages were perpetrated by the feudal
lords under the name of “rights.” Women were taught by church and state
alike that the feudal lord or seigneur had a right to them not only as against
themselves, but as against any claim of husband or father. The custom
known by a variety of names, but more modernly as “marchetta,” or
“marquette,” compelled newly married women to a most dishonorable
servitude. They were regarded as the rightful prey of the feudal lord for
from one to three days after their marriage,[3] and from this custom, the
oldest son of the serf was held as the son of the lord, “as perchance it was
he who begot him.”

From this nefarious degradation of woman the custom of Borough-English
arose, the youngest son becoming the heir.[4] The original signification of
the word borough, being to make secure, the peasant through Borough-
English made secure the right of his own son to what inheritance he might
leave, thus cutting off his property from the possible son of his hated lord.
France, Germany, Prussia, England, Scotland, and all christian countries in
which feudalism existed, held to the enforcement of marquette. The lord
deemed this right his, as fully as he did his claim to half the crops of the
land, or half the wool shorn from the sheep. More than one reign of terror
arose in France from the enforcement of this law, and the uprisings of the
peasants over Europe during the twelfth century and the fierce Jacquerie, or
Peasants War, of the fourteenth century in France, owed their origin among
other causes to the enforcement of these claims by the lords upon the newly
married wife. The Edicts of Marley securing the seigneural tenure in Lower
Canada transplanted that claim to America when Canada was under the
control of France.[5]
During the feudal period when chivalry held highest rank in the duties of
the knight, women of the lower classes were absolutely unprotected. Both
Church and State were their most bitter enemies; the lords even in holy
orders did not lessen their claims upon the bride. Most of the bishops and
chanonies were also temporal lords. The Bishop of Amiens possessed this
right against the women of his vassals and the peasants of his fiefs, of
which he was dispossessed at the commencement of the fifteenth century,
by an arreet, rendered at the solicitation of husbands.[6] Although the clergy,
largely drawn from the nobility, whose portionless younger sons were thus
easily provided for, sustained the corruptions of the lords temporal yet
having connected themselves with the church, they did not fail to preserve
their own power even over the nobility.
The canons of the Cathedral of Lyons, bore title of Counts of Lyons; sixteen
quarters of nobility, eight on side of the father; eight on side of the mother.
The marchetta or cuissage was still practiced by them in the fourteenth
century at the time Lyons was reunited to the crown of France. It was but
slowly, after a great number of complaints and arrests of judgment that the
canons of Lyons consented to forego this custom. In several cantons of
Piccardy, the curés imitated the bishops and anciently took the right of

cuissage, but ultimately the peasants of this region refused to marry, and the
priests gave up this practice which they had usurped when the bishop had
become too old to take his right.[7] The resolution not to marry, surprised
and confounded the lord “suzerains,” who perceived it would cause the
depopulation of their fiefs. During the feudal period, bearing children was
the duty pre-eminently taught women. Serf children increased the power
and possessions of the lord, they also added to the power of the church, and
the strangest sermons in regard to woman’s duty in this respect fell from the
lips of celibate monks and priests. She was taught that sensual submission
to man, and the bearing of children, were the two reasons for her having
been created, and that the woman who failed in either had no excuse for
longer encumbering the earth. The language used from the pulpit for the
enforcement of these duties, will not bear reproduction.[8] The villeins were
not entirely submissive under such great wrongs, frequently protesting
against this right of their suzerains. At one time a number of Piedmont
villages rose in united powers. Although[9] the concessions gained were but
small, not putting an end to the lord’s claim to the bride but merely
lessening the time of his spoliation, the results were great in establishing the
principle of serf rights.
Marquette began to be abolished in France towards the end of the sixteenth
century.[10] But an authority upon this question says that without doubt the
usage still continued in certain countries, farther asserting that even in this
century it existed in the county of Auvergne, and several vassals plead to
their lords against the continuance of this custom because of the great
unhappiness it caused them. The lower orders of the clergy were very
unwilling to relinquish this usage, vigorously protesting to their archbishops
against the deprivation of the right, declaring they could not be
dispossessed.[11] Boems states that he was present at a spiritual council of
the metropolitane of Bourges, and heard a priest claim the right upon
ground of immemorial usage.[12]
Although feudalism is generally considered the parent of this most
infamous custom, some writers attribute its origin to an evangelical council,
or to precepts directly inculcated by the church,[13] whose very highest
dignitaries did not hesitate to avail themselves of the usage. In 1471, quite
the latter part of the fifteenth century, Pope Sixtus IV[14] sought admission

to the very illustrious Piedmont family, Della Rovere, which possessed the
right of cuissage, allowing the lord absolute control of his vassals’ newly
wedded bride for three days and nights; a cardinal of the family having
secured the patent by which this outrageous and abominable right was
granted them. The rights of the Lords spiritual in the jus primae noctis, at
first, perchance, confined to those temporal lords who holding this right
entered the church, at last extended to the common priesthood, and the
confessional became the great fount of debauchery. Woman herself was
powerless; the church, the state, the family, all possessed authority over her
as against herself. Although eventually redemption through the payment of
money, or property, was possible, yet a husband too poor or penurious to
save her, aided in this debasement of his wife.[15] This inexpressible abuse
and degradation of woman went under the name of pastime, nor were the
courts to be depended upon for defense.[16] Their sympathies and decisions
were with the lord. Few except manorial courts existed. Even when freedom
had been purchased for the bride, all feudal customs rendered it imperative
upon her to bear the “wedding dish” to the castle. Accompanied by her
husband, this ceremony ever drew upon the newly married couple a
profusion of jeers and ribald jests from which they were powerless to
protect themselves. While in ancient Babylon woman secured immunity by
one service and payment to the temple, the claim of the lord to the peasant
wife was not always confined to the marriage day, and refusal of the loan of
his wife at later date brought most severe punishment upon the husband.[17]
Blessing the nuptial bed by the priest, often late at night, was also common,
and accompanied by many abuses, until advancing civilization overpowered
the darkness of the church and brought it to an end. When too poor to
purchase the freedom of his bride, the husband was in one breath assailed
by the most opprobrious names,[18] and in the next he was congratulated
upon the honor to be done him in that perchance his oldest child would be
the son of a baron.[19] So great finally became the reproach and infamy
connected with the droit de cuissage, as this right was generally called in
France,[20] and so recalcitrant became the peasants over its nefarious
exactions, that ultimately both lords spiritual and lords temporal fearing for
their own safety, commenced to lessen their demands.[21] This custom had
its origin at the time the great body of the people were slaves bound either
to the person or land of some lord. At this period personal rights no more

existed for the lower classes than for the blacks of our own country during
the time of slavery. Under feudalism, the property, family ties, and even the
lives of the serfs were under control of the suzerain. It was a system of
slavery without the name; the right of the lord to all first fruits was
universally admitted;[22] the best in possession of the serf, by feudal custom
belonged to the lord. The feudal period was especially notable for the
wrongs of women. War, the pastime of nobles and kings, brought an
immense number of men into enforced idleness. Its rapine and carnage were
regarded as occupations superior to the tillage of the soil or the arts of
peace. Large numbers of men, retainers of every kind, hung about the castle
dependent upon its lord, obedient to his commands.[23] At an age when
books were few and reading an accomplishment of still greater rarity, these
men, apart from their families, or totally unbound by marriage, were in
readiness for the grossest amusement. At an age when human life was
valueless, and suffering of every kind was disregarded, we can readily
surmise the fate likely to overtake unprotected peasant women. They were
constantly ridiculed and insulted; deeds of violence were common and
passed unreproved. For a woman of this class to be self-respecting was to
become a target for the vilest abuse. Morality was scoffed at; to drag the
wives and daughters of villeins and serfs into the mire of lechery was
deemed a proper retribution for their attempted pure lives; they possessed
no rights of person or morality against the feudal lord and his wild retainers.
All christian Europe was plunged into the grossest morality.[24] A mistress
was looked upon as a necessary part of a monarch’s state.[25] Popes,
cardinals, and priests of lesser degrees, down to the present century, still
continued the unsavory reputation of their predecessors;[26] “nephews,”
“nieces,” and “sacrilegious” children are yet supported by the revenues of
the Church, or left to poverty, starvation and crime. It was long the custom
of christian municipalities to welcome visiting kings by deputations of
naked women,[27] and as late as the eighteenth century, a mistress whose
support was drawn from the revenues of the kingdom, was recognized as
part of the pageantry of the kingdom.
The heads of the Greek and Protestant Churches, no less than of the
Catholic, appear before the world as men of scandalous lives. The history of
the popes is familiar to all students. No less is that of the English Eighth
Henry, the real father of the Reformation, in England, and founder of the

Anglican Church, whose adulteries and murders make him a historic Blue
Beard. The heads of the Greek Church figure in a double sense as fathers of
their people. The renowned Peter the Great amused himself by numberless
liaisons, filling Russia with descendants whose inherited tendencies are
those of discontent and turmoil. When he visited the Court of Prussia, 1717,
he was accompanied by his czarina, son, daughter, and four hundred ladies
in waiting, women of low condition, each of whom carried an elegantly
dressed infant upon her arms. If asked in regard to the paternity of the child
they invariably replied “my lord has done me the honor to make me its
mother.”[28]
In no country has a temporal monarch under guise of a spiritual ruler been
more revered than in Russia. Even amidst nihilism a belief that the czar can
do no wrong is the prevailing conviction among the Slavic peoples. This is
both a great cause of, and a result of Russian degradation. If we except the
proportionately few liberal thinkers, that conviction is as strong as it was in
the time of Ivan the Terrible. In no civilized or half-civilized nation is
ignorance as dense as among the peasantry of that vast empire embracing
one-sixth of the habitable globe. Nor to the czar alone was such disregard of
woman’s right of person confined. The system of serfdom which existed
until within the last half of the present century, was a system of feudalism in
its oppression of women, although if possible even more gross. The sale of
young peasant girls regularly took place, and the blood of the nobility of
that country runs in the veins of its most degraded and ignorant population.
[29]
Although Italy the seat of the papal power is noted for the ignorance,
squalor, and superstition of its people, we no less find such a condition of
affairs existing in Russia. Amid the starvation of its people, accompanied by
“hunger-typhus,” that form of disease which in the Irish famine of 1848 was
known as “ship-fever,” the peasants will not accept aid from Count Tolstoi,
whom they have been taught to regard as Anti-Christ, fearing that by so
doing they will condemn themselves to eternal torment.[30] While the
peasantry are thus suffering wrongs of every nature, the priesthood and
churches are as thriving as before.
Having shown the results of power in the hands of a controlling class, upon
women of low degree in both the Catholic and Greek divisions of
christendom, we have but to look at our own country to find like condition

under Protestantism. The state of the slave women of the South was that of
serfs of the body under feudalism, or of the serf peasant women of Russia.
Nor is other proof of this statement required than the hue of this race, no
longer spoken of as the blacks, but as colored people. Let the condition of
woman as to her rights of person, under the three great divisions of
Christianity, be answer to all who without examination of history, or the
customs of ancient and modern times, and with eyes closed to these most
patent facts, so falsely assert that woman has been elevated by christianity,
and is now holding a position never before in the world accorded her. But
what has already been shown of her degradation under christian teachings
and laws is but a small portion of the wrongs woman has suffered during
the christian centuries.
Under theory of the divine rights of man, society has everywhere been
permeated with disregard for woman’s rights of person. Monarchs not
posing as spiritual heads of their people have yet equally made use of their
place and power for woman’s degradation, and an indefinite fatherhood
outside of marriage. Augustus of Saxony, King of Poland, is chiefly
renowned in history as the father of three hundred illegitimate children.[31]
Of Charles II not alone King of England, but also head of the Anglican
Church, one of his subjects declared him to be the father of many of his
people in the literal as well as in the spiritual sense. Four English dukes of
the present day trace their lineage to this monarch, who left no legitimate
descendants.[32]
H.R.H. the present heir-apparent to the English throne bears an equally
unsavory record.[33] To him and his aristocratic companions in guilt is due
the support and protection of England’s notorious and infamous purchase
and sale, outrage, and exploitation of helpless young girls. An English
clergyman writing the New York Sun, at the time of the disclosures made by
the Pall Mall Gazette, declared he had in his possession a list of the names
of the royal princes, dukes, nobles, and leading men who had been the
principal patrons and supporters of the “gilded hells” devoted to the ruin of
the merest children, girls from the ages of nine to thirteen.[34] The
reputation of the male members of the Hanoverian dynasty has ever been
bad. Trace as you will the path of either ecclesiastical or temporal rulers
claiming authority by “divine right,” and you will find the way marked with

the remains of women and children whose life has been wrecked by man
under plea of created superiority. While Italy within the last forty years has
escaped from the temporal control of the pope, its kings have no less copied
the immorality of the “Vicar of God”; the predecessor of the late king of
Italy having left thirty-three illegitimate children. An instance of the
survival of the feudal idea as to the right of the lord to the person of his
vassal women occurred in Ireland within the past few years, graphically
described in a letter upon landlords, from Mr. D. R. Locke (Nasby),
December, 1891, in which he says;
One was shot a few years ago and a great ado was made about it. In this
case as in most of the others it was not a question of rent. My Lord had
visited his estates to see how much more money could be taken out of
his tenants and his lecherous eye happened to rest upon a very beautiful
girl, the eldest daughter of a widow with seven children. Now this
beautiful girl was betrothed to a nice sort of a boy, who, having been in
America, knew a thing or two. My Lord, through his agent, who is
always a pimp as well as a brigand, ordered Kitty to come to the castle.
Kitty knowing very well what that meant, refused.
“Very well,” says the agent, “yer mother is in arrears for rent, and you
had better see My Lord, or I shall be compelled to evict her.”
Kitty knew what that meant also. It meant that her gray haired mother,
her six helpless brothers and sisters would be pitched out by the
roadside to die of starvation and exposure, and so Kitty without saying a
word to her mother or any one else, went to the castle and was kept
there three days, till My Lord was tired of her, when she was permitted
to go.
She went to her lover, like an honest girl as she was, and told him she
would not marry him, but refused to give any reason.
Finally the truth was wrenched out of her, and Mike went and found a
shot gun that had escaped the eye of the royal constabulary, and he got
powder and shot and old nails, and he lay behind a hedge under a tree
for several days. Finally one day My Lord came riding by all so gay and
that gun went off, and ‘subsequent proceedings interested him no more.’

There was a hole, a blessed hole, clear through him, and he never was
so good a man as before because there was less of him.
Then Mike went and told Kitty to be of good cheer and not be cast
down, that the little difference between him and My Lord had been
happily settled, and that they would be married as soon as possible. And
they were married, and I had the pleasure of taking in my hand the very
hand that fired the blessed shot and of seeing the wife, to avenge whose
cruel wrongs the shot was fired.
Nor is this the only instance in modern Ireland. A certain lord Leitram was
noted a few years since for his attempts to dishonor the wives and daughters
of the peasantry upon his vast estate comprising 90,000 acres. His character
was that of the worst feudal barons, and like those he used his power as
magistrate and noble, in addition to that of landlord, to accomplish his
purpose. After an assault upon a beautiful and intelligent girl, by a brutal
retainer of his lordship, her character assailed, his tenantry finally declared
it necessary to resort to the last means in their power to preserve the honor
of their wives and daughters. Six men were chosen as the instruments of
their rude justice, and among them the brother of this girl upon whom the
leadership fell. They took oath to be true to the end, in life or death, raised a
sum of money, purchased arms, and seeking a convenient opportunity shot
him to death. Nor were the perpetrators ever discovered; yet it is now
known that two of them died in Australia, two in the Boer war in South
Africa, and the leader who came to the United States, changing his name,
passed away in the summer of 1892 in the State of Pennsylvania.
Under head of “A Story of To-day,” another tale is related of woman’s
oppression in Ireland aided by the Petty Sessions Bench in 1880.
Recently, a young girl named Catherine Cafferby, of Belmullet, in
County Mayo—the pink of her father’s family—fled from the
“domestic service” of a landlord as absolute as Lord Leitrim, the
moment the poor creature discovered what that “service” customarily
involved. The great man had the audacity to invoke the law to compel
her to return, as she had not given statutable notice of her flight. She
clung to the door-post of her father’s cabin; she told aloud the story of
her terror, and called on God and man to save her. Her tears, her shrieks,

her piteous pleadings were all in vain. The Petty Sessions Bench
ordered her back to the landlord’s “service,” or else to pay five pounds,
or two weeks in jail. This is not a story of Bulgaria under Murad IV but
of Ireland in the reign of the present sovereign. That peasant girl went to
jail to save her chastity. If she did not spend a fortnight in the cells, it
was only because friends of outraged virtue, justice, and humanity paid
the fine when the story reached the outer world.

These iniquities have taken place in christian lands[35] and these nefarious
outrages upon women have been enforced by the christian laws of both
church and state. The degradation and unhappiness of the husband at the
infringement of the lord’s spiritual and temporal upon his marital rights, has
been depicted by many writers but history has been quite silent upon the
despair and shame of the wife.[36] No hope appeared for woman anywhere.
The Church which should have been the great conserver of morals dragged
her to the lowest depths through the vileness of its teachings and its priestly
customs. The State which should have defended her civil rights followed
the example of the church in crushing her to the earth. Christian laws were
detrimental to woman in every relation of life.

The brilliant French author, Legouve,[37] gives from among the popular
songs of Brittany during the fourteenth century, a pathetic ballad, “The
Baron of Jauioz,” which vividly depicts the condition of the peasant women
of France at that date. In the power of the male members of her family over
her, we also find an exact parallel in the condition of English women of the
same era. The moral disease thus represented being due to the same
religious teaching, the change of country and language but more fully
serves to depict the condition of woman everywhere in christendom at this
period.
BRETON BALLAD OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. THE BARON
OF JAUIOZ.

I.

As I was at the river washing,
I heard the sighing of the bird of death.
“Good little Jina, you do not know it, but
you are sold to the Baron of Jauioz.”
Is this true, my mother, that I have heard?
Is it true that I was sold to old Jauioz?
“My poor little darling, I know nothing about it;
ask your father.”
“My nice good father, tell me now—is it true
that I am sold to Loys de Jauioz?”
“My beloved child, I know nothing about it;
ask your brother.”
Lannik, my brother, tell me now—is it true
that I am sold to that lord there?
“Yes you are sold to the Baron, and you must be
off at once. Your price is paid—fifty crowns of the
white silver and as much of the yellow gold.”

II.

She had not gone far from the hamlet
when she heard the ringing of the bells; whereat
she wept.
“Adieu Saint Ann! Adieu, bells of my fatherland;
Bells of my village church, adieu!”

III.

“Take a seat and rest thee till the repast is ready.”
The lord sat near the fire; his beard and hair all
white, and his eyes like living coals.
“Behold the young maiden whom I have desired
this many a day!”
“Come my child, let me show thee, crown by crown,
how rich I am; come, count with me, my beauty,
my gold and my silver.”
“I should like better to be with my mother
counting the chips on the fire.”
“Let us descend into the cellar and
taste of the wine that is sweet as honey.”
“I should like better to taste the meadow stream
Whereof my father’s horses drink.”
“Come with me from shop to shop to buy thee a
holiday cloak.”
“I should better like a linsey petticoat,
that my mother has woven for me.”
“Ah, that my tongue had been blistered when
I was such a fool as to buy thee!
Since nothing will comfort thee.”

g

IV.

“Dear little birds as you fly, I pray you
listen to me,
You are going to the village whither I cannot.
You are merry but I am sad.”
“Remember me to my playmates,
To the good mother who brought me to light,
And to the father who reared me; and tell my
brother
I forgive him.”

V.

Two or three months have passed and gone
when as the family are sleeping,
A sweet voice is heard at the door.
“My father, my mother, for God’s love pray for me;
your daughter lies on her bier.”
This ballad founded upon historic facts represents the social life of
christendom during the fourteenth century. The authority of the son, the
licentiousness of the lord, the powerlessness of the mother, the despair of
the daughter, the indifference of society, are vividly depicted in this pathetic
ballad. It shows the young girl regarded as a piece of merchandise, to be
bought and sold at the whim of her masters who are the men of her own
household and the lord of the manor. During the feudal period the power of
the son was nearly absolute. For his own aggrandisement he did not hesitate
to rob his sisters, or sell them into lechery.[38] Hopelessly despairing in
tone, this ballad gives us a clear picture of feudal times when chivalry was
at its height, and the church had reached its ultimate of power. Woman’s
attitude today is the echo of that despair. At this period the condition of a
woman was not even tolerable unless she was an heiress, with fiefs in
possession.[39] Even then she was deprived of her property in case of loss of
chastity, of which it was the constant aim to deprive her. Guardians, next of
kin, and if none such existed, the church threw constant temptations in her
way. Ruffians were hired, or reckless profligates induced to betray her
under plea of love and sympathy, well paid by the next heir for their
treachery.
Although Sir William Blackstone in his Commentaries said that he
discovered no traces of marquette in England, a reminiscence of that

custom is to be found in the “fine” or “permit” known in that country as
Redemption of Blood, and designated as Merchetum Sanguinis, by Fleta.[40]
This was a customary payment made by a tenant to his lord for license to
give his daughter in marriage. Such redemption was considered a special
mark of tenure in villeinage.[41] It was not exacted from a free man, which
is corroborative proof of its origin in the Jus Primae Noctis, of the feudal
lord. Of the free man this fine was not permissible, because of the privilege
of free blood. Raepsaet, M. Hoffman, Dr. Karl Schmidt, and other authors
writing in the interest of the church and finding it impossible to deny the
existence of some power over the bride, have questioned its character,
declaring it not to be feudal, but a spiritual authority, to guard the bride by
enforcing a penitence of marital abstinence of one to three days after the
nuptials. It is not to be doubted that under the peculiar teachings of the
church in regard to the uncleanliness of marriage, such continence was a
certain period part of church law.[42] Nevertheless this does not invalidate
the fact that a widespread contrary custom existed in feudal times and at a
still later period. The present usages of society point back to an age when
right to the peasant’s bride was enforced by the lord. A reminiscence[43] of
this period is to be found in charivari and the buying off of a party of this
character with refreshments from the house, or with money for the purchase
of cigars and liquor. Such occurrences constantly fall within our knowledge,
personally or through the press.[44] The very fact of such persecution of the
bridal pair is a symbol of that custom under which the retainers of the
feudal lord jeered and flouted the bridegroom, throwing him into foul water,
[45]
and other most unseemly practices. To others outside of the charivari
party this practice still affords amusement, few persons inclining to
interfere or prohibit such pastimes. Society no longer as sharply defined as
in the feudal period, yet has preserved in this practice a symbol of the times
when even the highborn dames in the castle equally as degraded as its lord,
amused themselves while the bride was in the company of the lord by
ridiculing and torturing the husband who in anxiety for his wife ventured
too near the castle. The present nearly universal custom of a wedding
journey must be referred in its origin to the same period, arising from an
inherited tendency in the bride and groom to escape the jeers and ill
treatment that in past ages invariably accompanied entrance into the
married state.

In some European countries redemption was demanded from all women,
not alone the daughters of villeins and serfs, but also of those of noble birth
who were freed by payment of a ransom in silver known as the “Maiden
Rents.” Lands were even held under Maiden Redemption.[46] In Scotland
this ransom became known as “Marquette”; Margaret wife of Malcolm
Canmore, generally spoken of for her goodness as Saint Margaret,[47]
exercising her royal influence in 1057 against this degradation of her sex.
Numberless seditions having arisen from this claim upon the bride, the king
more willingly established a release upon the payment of a piece of silver, a
demi-marc, called marquette (whence the name), and a certain number of
cows. The piece of silver went to the king, the cows to the queen, and from
that period cuissage was known as the droit de marquette. But this nefarious
custom possessed such strength, appealing directly to man’s basest
passions, his love of power, his profligacy—the human beast within him—
that it continued in existence nearly seven hundred years after the royal
edict in Scotland against its practice.[48] This vile power extended over all
ranks of women; the king holding it over the daughters of the grand
seigneur, the suzerain over the daughters of his vassals; the seigneur over
the daughters of his serfs, even the judge or bailie enforcing this right upon
all women who passed upon his road.[49]
The Church has ever been the bulwark of this base claim. Holding the
powers of penance and of excommunication, such custom could neither
have originated nor been sustained without the sanction of the church.[50] At
this date the privileges of the lower clergy were extraordinary. Even in
England they were not amenable to the common law; they ruled the laity
with iron hand, but the laity possessed no power over the priesthood.[51] All
appointments were in priestly hands, the union of church and state
complete.
God himself seemed to have forsaken woman, and the peasantry lost all
belief in the justice of earth or heaven. The customs of feudalism which
were akin to the customs of power wherever existing throughout
christendom did more to create what the church terms “infidelity” than all
the reason of the philosophers. No human being is so degraded as not to
possess an innate sense of justice; a wrong is as keenly felt by the most
humble and ignorant as by the educated and refined, its effect more lasting

because of the impossibility of redress. The power of the seigneur was
nearly equal to that of the king himself. Manorial courts entirely local aided
the seigneur in the enforcement of his traditional privileges[52] at the
expense of the villeins. The crown possessed no jurisdiction over these
courts. The lord held the right to make laws, render justice, lay imposts,
declare war, coin money, dispose of the goods and lives of his subjects, and
other prerogatives still more closely touching their personal rights,
especially of the women living in his dominion.[53]
To persons not conversant with the history of feudalism and the church it
will seem impossible that such foulness could ever have been part of
christian civilization. That the vices they have been taught to consider the
outgrowth of paganism, and as the worst heathendom could have existed in
Christian Europe upheld many hundred years by both church and state will
strike most people with incredulity. Such however is the truth; we are
compelled to admit well attested facts of history, however severe a blow
they strike our preconceived beliefs.
The seigneural tenure of the feudal period was a law of Christian Europe
more dishonorable than the worship of Astarte at Babylon.[54] In order to
fully comprehend the vileness of marquette, we must remember that it did
not originate in a pagan country, many thousand years since; that it was not
a heathen custom transplanted to Europe with many others adopted by the
church,[55] but that it arose in christian countries a thousand years after the
origin of that religion, continuing in existence until within the last century.
The attempt made by some modern authors to deny that the claim of the
feudal lord to the person of his female serf upon her marriage ever existed,
on the ground that statutes sustaining such a right have not been discovered,
is extremely weak.[56] The authority of a custom or “unwritten law” is still
almost absolute. A second objection that such customs are unchristian has
been answered. The third plea in opposition, namely that those so outraged,
so oppressed, left no record of resistance is false. Aside from the fact that
education was everywhere limited, no peasant and but few of the nobility
knowing how to read or write, and within the church learning very rare, we
have indisputable evidence of strong character in the revolt of serfs at
different periods, through which concessions were gained; the final refusal

of the serfs to marry, and in the travesty upon religion known as the “Black
Mass.”
We can not measure the serf’s power of resistance by the same standard as
our own. The degradation of man with but a few exceptions was as great as
that of woman. Civilly and educationally the peasant man was on a par with
the peasant woman. No more than she had he a voice in making the laws;
the serf was virtually a slave under the absolute dominion of his lord. No
power existed for him higher than that of his feudal superior. It is nearly
impossible to realize the hopeless degraded condition of the peasant serf of
the middle ages. It has had no parallel in the present century, except in the
slavery of the southern states. Free action, free speech, free thought was
impossible. But our respect for humanity is increased when we know that
these vassals, although under the life and death power of their lords, did not
tamely submit to the indignities enforced upon their wives and daughters.
It must also be remembered that the historians of that period were generally
priests by whom the fact of such usage or custom would pass unmentioned,
especially as the church taught that woman was created to meet the special
demands of man. Other important historical facts have been as lightly
touched upon, or passed over entirely. The deification of Julius Caesar
while Emperor of Rome, is scarcely referred to in the more familiar literary
sources of Roman history. And yet his worship was almost universal in the
provinces, where he was adored as a god. The records of this worship are
only to be found in scattered monuments and inscriptions but recently
brought to light, and deciphered within the last few years. Through these it
is proven that there was an organized worship of this emperor, and an order
of consecrated priests devoted to him.[57] Higgins refers to this deification
of Caesar.[58] It is not alone proof of the low condition of morality at this
period, but also of the universal disbelief in woman’s authority over, or
right to herself, that so few writers upon feudal subjects have treated of the
libidinous powers of the lord over his female serfs. Even those presenting
the evils of feudalism in other respects, have merely expressed a mild
surprise that christian people should have admitted that right of the lord
over his feminine vassals. The various names under which this right was
known as jus primae noctis,[59] droit de seigneur,[60] droit de jambage,[61]
droit de cuissage,[62] droit d’ afforage,[63] droit de marquette,[64] and many

other terms too indelicate for repetition, indicating this right of the lord over
all the women in his domain, is still another incontestable proof of the
universality of the custom.
The Mosaic teaching as to sacredness of “first fruits,” under Judaism,
dedicated to the Lord of Heaven, doubtless was in part the origin of the
claim of the feudal lord. The law of primogeniture, or precedence of the
first born son as the beginning of “his father’s strength” is also a translation
from Judaism into the customs of many nations, but nowhere under the law
of primogeniture at the present day does even a first born daughter receive
as high consideration as a first born son. This is especially noticeable in
royal families. It is not therefore singular that men who took the literal
sense of the bible in science, who believed that the world had been created
in six days, this work having so greatly fatigued the Lord Almighty as to
make rest of the seventh day necessary for him, should under example of
that lord, claim the first fruits in all their possessions. No Christians of the
present day, except the Mormons, so fully base their lives upon the
teachings of the bible as the Catholics of the middle ages. If we accord
divine authority to this book, accepting the literal word as infallible and
sacred, we must admit that both Church and State were at this period in
unison with its teachings, and even during the nineteenth century have not
freed themselves from the stigma of sustaining woman’s degradation; the
theory of the feudal ages remains the same, although the practice is
somewhat different. Legal bigamy or polygamy, non-marital unions, are
common in every large city of christendom. Government license has created
a class in many European countries devoted to the most degraded lives
under government sanction, protection, and control; in England known as
“Queen’s Women,” “Government Women.” Thus the State places itself
before the world as a trafficker in women’s bodies for the vilest purposes.
The culmination of nearly two thousand years of christian teaching is the
legalization of vice for women and the creation of a new crime. Previous to
the enactment of this law the rules of modern jurisprudence held an accused
person as innocent until proven guilty. Under this legalization of vice all
women within a certain radius of recruiting, or other army stations, are
“suspects,” looked upon as immoral, and liable to arrest, examination, and
registration upon government books as government women. It required
seventeen years of arduous work to repeal this law in England. This

legalization of prostitution in the nineteenth century by the State is its open
approval of that doctrine of the Church that woman was created for man. It
is an acknowledgment by men that vice is an inherent quality of their
natures. It is in accord with man’s repeated assertion that only through
means of a class of women pursuing immorality as a business, is any
woman safe from violence.
In a letter to the National Woman Suffrage Convention at St. Louis, May,
1879, Mrs. Josephine E. Butler, Honorable Secretary of the Federation and
of the Ladies National Association for the Protection of Women, wrote:
England holds a peculiar position in regard to the question. She was the
last to adopt this system of slavery, and she adopted it in that thorough
manner which characterizes the actions of the Anglo-Saxon race. In no
other country has prostitution been registered by law. It has been
understood by the Latin race, even when morally enervated, that the law
could not without risk of losing its majesty and force sanction illegality
and violate justice. In England alone the regulations are law.
This legalization of vice, which is the endorsement of the “necessity” of
impurity of man and the institution of the slavery of woman, is the most
open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of the
sacredness of the individual human being. An English high-class journal
dared to demand that women who are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt
with “not as human beings, but as foul sewers,” or some such “material
nuisance” without souls, without rights, and without responsibility.
When the leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a
point of combined skepticism and despotism as to recommend such a
manner of dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that
country may not presently legalize, there is no organization of murder,
no conspiracy of abominable things that it may not, and in due time will
not—have been found to embrace in its guilty methods. Were it possible
to secure the absolute physical health of a whole province or an entire
continent by the destruction of one, only one poor and sinful woman,
woe to that nation which should dare, by that single act of destruction,
to purchase this advantage to the many! It will do it at its peril. God will
take account of the deed not in eternity only, but in time, it may be in
the next or even in the present generation.

Although a long and active work through seventeen years eventually
brought about the repeal of this law in England, it still continues in the
British colonies, being forced upon the people in opposition to their own
action. After the Cape Parliament of the Colony of Good Hope had repealed
the law, Sir Bartle Frere re-introduced it by means of an edict.[65] When in
London, 1882, Sir John Pope Hennessey, Governor and Commander in
Chief of British China, was waited upon by an influential deputation of
members of parliament and others to whom he made known the practical
workings of governmental regulation of prostitution introduced by England
into that colony. He did not hesitate to characterize it as a system of slavery
for the registered women and girls. He also declared that they detested the
life they are thus compelled to enter having both a dread and an abhorrence
of foreigners, especially foreign sailors and soldiers. He said such Chinese
girls are the real slaves of Hong Kong.

Now to that statement I adhere. I give it to you on the full authority of
the Governor of the colony. I have been five years looking at the
operation of this law in Hong Kong, and that is the result to which I
have arrived that, under the flag of England there is slavery there, but it
is slavery created and protected by these ordinances.
The relation of Christianity to this treatment of Chinese women, and the
contempt with which this religion is regarded by these heathen, is most
fully shown by Sir John’s conversation with the leading Chinese merchant
of Canton, as given by himself, upon the material progress of the colony. To
this merchant Sir Pope said: “Your people are making a large fortune here.
Why not send down your second son to enter the house of the Chinese
merchant and learn the business there?” The merchant replied, “I can not
for this reason; Hong Kong is a sink of iniquity.” Sir Pope Hennessey
answered. “This is a Christian colony; we have been here now for forty
years, we are supposed to be doing the best we can to spread civilization
and christianity.” The Chinaman repeated: “It is a sink of iniquity in my
mind. As Chinamen we think of domestic and family life—we reverence
such things—but how do I see the poor Chinese treated in this colony?”
And he related stories of the abuses to which his countrywomen were
subjected.
In repeating this conversation to Her Majesty’s government, Sir Pope
Hennessey declared the words that the merchant of Canton who called
Hong Kong a “sink of iniquity” have a wide application, because the British
colony at Hong Kong is geographically a part of a great Empire, an empire
where you have missionaries of various churches. “I have been asked to
explain the curious and distressing fact that christianity is declining in
China. I think it is declining mainly on account of the treaties we have
forced upon the Chinese; but I will frankly tell you, it is declining also
because they see these girls registered in such houses for ‘Europeans’ and
made practically slaves under our flag.”[66]
Nor are the Cape of Good Hope, and China, the sole foreign countries in
which this system of the legalized moral degradation of women has been
carried by England, nearly one hundred places in India showing the same
vice under license from the British Government, even to bearing the same

name.[67] Nor have innumerable petitions and protests from native and
foreign ladies, from zenana workers, from missionaries, and even from all
ranks of the resident English civil service for immediate repeal of this vilest
of all laws, been of the least effect. So thoroughly imbued are English
legislators with contempt for womanhood, as not only to maintain these
outrageous laws but also to cause fear in the minds of those women who for
twenty years wrought for the repeal of these acts in Great Britain and
Ireland, of their again being introduced under more insidious and dangerous
form.[68] A memorial signed by a number of native born and English ladies
was presented to the Viceroy praying that the age of protection for young
girls be raised. While in India a man’s dog, horse, elephant, and even the
plants of his garden are under the protection of English law, his daughter of
ten years is outside this protection.[69] The penal code punishes with
imprisonment or a fine, or both, the man who injures an animal valued at
ten rupees; if the animal be worth fifty rupees his imprisonment may be for
five years, while for dishonestly coaxing his neighbor’s dog to follow him,
the punishment is three years imprisonment, or a fine or both; while the
man who induces “consent” from a girl-child of ten years escapes all
punishment.
In deference to the bitter opposition these acts created, it was declared that
legalized prostitution was abolished in British India, June 5th, 1888. A
statement was made in the House of Commons that the contagious disease
acts had been suspended in Bombay. But an investigation of these
statements by the English Social Purity Society, proved them false, the
Sentinel, its organ, stating, June 1890, that upon inquiry it was found that
the licensing of prostitution systematically prevails in British India, and is
always attended with results most disastrous to health of body as well as
morals of the community. The most extraordinary course is taken towards
the accomplishment of their ends, by the advocates of legalizing vice. In
1888 having failed to secure an act of the legislature of the state of New
York, in its favor, a society to this end was formed in the city of New York,
incorporated as a “Voluntary Association”; borrowing the name used in
England at the time its women were most degraded by the state.[70] This
society grants certificates to women presenting themselves for examination.
And thus step by step under many forms more extended than even under

feudal law, is woman’s moral degradation made the effort of christian
civilization of today.
The “ten thousand licensed women of the town” of the City of Hamburg,
are required by the State to show certificates that they regularly attended
Church, and also partake of the sacrament. And even in Protestant Berlin,
the capital of Protestant Prussia, the Church upon demand of the State
furnished certificates of their having partaken of holy communion to those
women securing license to lead vicious lives; the very symbol and body of
him, whom the christian world worships as its saviour, thus becoming the
key to unlock the doors of woman’s moral degradation.[71]
The fact of governments lending their official aid to demoralization of
woman by the registration system, shows an utter debasement of law. This
system is directly opposed to the fundamental principle of right, that of
holding of the accused innocent until proven guilty, which until now has
been recognized as a part of modern law. Under the registration or license
system, all women within the radius of its action are under suspicion; all
women are held as morally guilty until they prove themselves innocent.
Where this law is in force, all women are under an irresponsible police
surveillance, liable to accusation, arrest, examination, imprisonment, and
the entrance of their names upon the list of the lewd women of the town.
Upon this frightful infraction of justice, we have the sentiments of the late
Sheldon Amos, when Professor of Jurisprudence in the Law College of
London University. In “The Science of Law,” he says, in reference to this
very wrong:
The loss of liberty to the extent to which it exists, implies a degradation
of the State, and, if persisted in, can only lead to its dissolution. No
person or class of persons must be under the cringing fear of having
imputed to them offenses of which they are innocent, and of being taken
into custody in consequence of such imputation. They must not be liable
to be detained in custody without so much as a prima facie case being
made out, such as in the opinion of a responsible judicial officer leaves
a presumption of guilt. They must not be liable to be detained for an
indefinite time without having the question of their guilt or innocence
investigated by the best attainable methods. When the fact comes to be
inquired into, the best attainable methods of eliciting the truth must be

used. In default of any one of these securities, public liberty must be
said to be proportionately at a very low ebb.
Great effort has been made to introduce this system into the United States,
and a National Board of Health, created by Congress in 1879, is carefully
watched lest its irresponsible powers lead to its encroachment upon the
liberties and personal rights of women. A resolution adopted March 5, 1881,
at a meeting of the New York committee appointed to thwart the effort to
license vice in this country, shows the need of its watchful care.
Resolved, That this committee has learned with much regret and
apprehension of the action of the American Public Health Association,
at its late annual meeting in New Orleans, in adopting a sensational
report commending European governmental regulation of prostitution,
and looking to the introduction in this country, with modifications,
through the medium of State legislative enactments and municipal
ordinances, of a kindred immoral system of State-regulated social vice.
Even the Latin races in their lowest degradation did not put the sanction of
law upon the open sale of women to vice, says Mrs. Butler. This remained
for the Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic races, under the highest christian
civilization in a class of women licensed by the State, under protection and
name of the head of the Anglican Church, as “Queen’s Women,”
“Government Women,” both Church and State here uniting in the nefarious
business of making women, by law, the slaves of man’s lowest nature. A
system which openly declares “the necessity” for woman’s foulest
degradation, in order to protect man in his departure from the moral law, a
system that annually sends its tens of thousands down to a death from
which christian society grants no resurrection. Similar religious beliefs
beget similar results. Times change, and with them methods, but as long as
the foundation of the christian church of every name, rests upon the belief
in woman’s created inferiority to man, and that she brought sin into the
world, so long will similar social, industrial, and moral results follow. The
Catholic, Greek, and Protestant divisions, all degrade women but under
different forms. That the woman of every christian land fears to meet a man
in a secluded place by day or by night, is of itself sufficient proof of the low
state of christian morality. Several states have at different times attempted
the enactment of similar laws through bills introduced into their

legislatures; requiring constant watchfulness on part of the friends of social
purity lest this great wrong be consummated, a wrong primarily against
woman. In certain cities, as St. Louis, where such registration and license
was for some time demanded, the foulest injuries were perpetrated upon
entirely innocent and reputable women, injuries for which they had no
redress.[72] Under the legalized vice system, women are slaves, not
possessing even the right of repudiating this kind of life.
A gentleman traveling in France, 1866, relates a most pathetic instance of
the attempted escape and the forcible return to the house of infamy, of a
young girl whose person there was at the command of every brute who
chose to pay the price of her master. The tram car in which this gentleman
was riding, crowded with ladies and girls of refined appearance, was
suddenly stopped on one of the principal streets of Havre, by a dense crowd
swaying back and forth across the track. He said:
I then became aware that two men, tall powerful fellows, were carrying
or rather trying to carry, a young woman seemingly between sixteen and
eighteen years of age, who occupied herself in violently clutching at
everything and anything from a lamp-post to a shop door handle, a
railing, and the pavement itself.
As a matter of course, her body swayed between the two men, half
dragging on the pavement, her clothing besmeared with mud and blood.
For the rough handling had superadded crimson to other stains. This
proved the case to be not one of accident, although the screams, shrieks
and cries of the poor girl might well have led to the belief of her having
been the victim of a run over, and of being in convulsions of acute
agony. Her agonizing cries for “pity,” “police,” “protection,” “help,”
“murder,” “Oh! oh! oh!” were reiterated incessantly. At one particular
moment her contortions, and the violence of her efforts to free herself,
or even to bring her head into a more convenient position than hanging
face downward, while a yard or so of long, bedraggled hair, all loose,
was sweeping up the dirt from the pavement, were so violent that her
two carriers had to let her slip from their grasp on to the flagstones.
All this time, unmoved by, and totally indifferent to her piercing cries,
stood by, or strolled calmly onward with the crowd, a policeman in

uniform and on duty. My enquiry of, “What is all this piece of work
about? Is it an accident? Is the woman drunk, or what?” He smilingly
answered: “Oh! not drunk, sir, not at all, not at all. It’s only one of those
young licensed girls, who has been trying to escape from her house, and
that’s her master, who has just caught her again, and is carrying her
back to his place. That’s all!”
“I was powerless to help.” In many christian countries a traffic in girls
exists under government protection and license.
Criminal vice chiefly finds its feminine prey among the poorest and most
helpless class who are the victims of this new commercial business, its
customers scattered in every christian land, and accepting their spoil only
upon the certificate of some reputable physician as to their innocence and
previous uncontamination. Crime, vice, and cruelty, were never before so
closely united in one infamous system; the purchase of young innocence by
old iniquity under protection of law.[73] A bill was introduced into the
English parliament to check this business of girl destruction, accompanied
by proof so direct, and proof of the necessity of immediate action so great,
that it was not doubted that the bill would pass at once. Yet it encountered
secret[74] and powerful opposition, was finally referred to a committee
already so overburdened with work and so far behindhand that it was
manifest that the bill could not be reached in years. Gilded vice laughed at
this result, and the iniquitous business proceeded as before. At that period
the Pall Mall Gazette entered into an investigation whose results roused the
whole civilized world. Even clergymen, ignoring the fact that christian
teaching had brought this vice into being, joined the press in scathing
reproof of patrician London iniquity.[75] Societies were formed for the
protection of young girls from the vice of men who used the power of
wealth and station to corrupt the daughters of the poor.[76]
Under English christian law it has never been a crime to morally destroy a
girl of thirteen, because under that law she is held responsible for her own
undoing. Girls of this tender age, infants, in all that pertains to the control of
property, incapable of making a legal contract, because of immaturity of
understanding, are yet held by that law as of age to protect themselves from
a seducer; held to possess sufficient judgment to thwart all the wiles of men
old in years and crime—of men protected in their iniquities by laws of their

own making—men shielded by the legislation of their own sex—men who
escape all punishment because men alone enact the laws. It is not alone the
waifs of society who fall a prey to the seducer, but the children of reputable
parents and good homes are waylaid on their way to and from school and
lured to ruin.[77] To the modern ghoul it is of no moment upon whom he
preys, provided his victim be but young and innocent. Lecky has portrayed
the standard of morals of the present day as far higher than in pagan Rome,
but we must be allowed to doubt this. Immoral sentiment is more deftly
hidden, and law more dependent upon public opinion. As soon as the
general consensus of public opinion rises in opposition to girl destruction,
the law will regulate itself in accordance with this standard.
Lord Shaftesbury, upon this point, said:
The Pall Mall Gazette has published to the world disclosures of a most
horrible, and many would think of an incredible character. Not even the
questionings of peace or war or most intricate foreign policy, ought to
interfere with energetic measures to suppress these evils. But before we
can make any great advance, there must be a considerable move of
public opinion. It must be vigorous and determined, and I will tell you
why. You may depend upon it that no government undertakes a question
of a really important and social character until it has been forced upon it
by the voice of public opinion. Consequently it is our duty to bring the
voice of that public opinion to bear on this question. Law can be evaded
in every possible way. The only thing that defies evasion is a wide
spread and universally extended public opinion. I hope that we shall be
able to create such a public opinion throughout the country that persons
will be induced to come forward voluntarily and give evidence. The
plague spot is too deep, too wide, and there are too many persons
interested in the continuance of it, to enable us easily to wipe it out.
Uncommon energy will be necessary; and I hope we shall raise such an
amount of popular indignation that the effect will be irresistable.
But the public feeling, the public indignation against these enormities did
not rise to the height of restrictive legislation. The policy of a portion both
of the English and the American press was that of suppression, upon the
plea that a knowledge of these crimes would be injurious to the morals of
society. Suppression was also the aim of the “royal princes, dukes, nobles,

and leading men,” who were the principal patrons and supporters of this
nefarious system. Suppression is the strongest opposing weapon against
reform. To compel change needs light and discussion. “It is only when
wrongs find a tongue that they become righted.” Woman, legally powerless
in the doing away with abuses, or the punishment of crime, must depend
upon publicity for the creation of a public sentiment in her favor.
One of the most remarkable facts connected with disclosures of this crime
against womankind was the extent to which men of all ages and character
were found identified with it. The world of business and that of politics
were equally as well known in the haunts of vice as in the outside world,
but they were judged by a different standard and their relative importance
was altogether changed.[78] It was a literal day of judgment, in which evil
character, deftly hidden during public life, was there unveiled.
The most horribly striking fact connected with this investigation was the
extreme youth of these victims. The report of the committee of the House of
Lords, 1882, declared the evidence proved beyond doubt that juvenile vice
from an almost incredibly early age was increasing at an appalling extent in
England, and especially in London; ten thousand girls, thirteen, fourteen,
and fifteen years of age, had been drawn into this vice, an English paper
declaring the ignorance of these girls to be almost incredible. The condition
of these girl-children is far more horrible than that of the victims of infant
marriage in Syria, Egypt, India; the infant victims of christian lands are
more fully destroyed, soon becoming mental, physical and moral wrecks;
alternate imbecility and wild screaming being common among these child
victims of vice.[79]
Christianity created the modern brothel, which as closely follows in the
wake of evangelical work of the Moody and Sankey style, as did public
women the ancient church councils.[80] While in the past the legal wrongs
of woman in the marriage relation, in which she is robbed of name,
personality, earnings, children, had a tendency to drive her to live with man
outside of the authority of church or state, the occupations recently opened
to her whereby she can gain a reputable livelihood by her own exertions,
has greatly increased the ranks of single women.[81] No longer compelled to
marry for a home or position, the number of young girls who voluntarily
refrain from marriage, by choice living single, increases each year. No

longer driven to immorality for bread, a great diminution has taken place in
the ranks of “public women.”[82] No longer forced by want into this life, the
lessening number of such women not meeting the requirements of patrons
of vice, resulted in the organization of a regular system for the abduction,
imprisonment, sale, and exportation of young girls; England and Germany
most largely controlling this business, although Belgium, Holland and
France, Switzerland, several countries of South America, Canada, and the
United States are to some extent also engaged in this most infamous traffic.
[83]

Foreign traffic in young English girls was known to exist long before the
revelation of the Pall Mall Gazette made English people aware of the extent
of the same system under the home government. It was this widely
extended and thoroughly organized commerce in girl-children which roused
a few people to earnest effort against it, and secured the formation of a
society called “Prevention of Traffic in English Girls.” To the chairman of
this society, Mr. Benjamin Scott, was the first official suggestion due that
terminated in that investigation by Editor Stead, which for a moment shook
the civilized world, and held christian England to light as a center of the
vilest, most odious, most criminal slave traffic the world ever knew.
London, the great metropolis of christian England, the largest city of
ancient or modern times, is acknowledged by statisticians and sociologists
to be the point where crime, vice, despair, and misery are found in their
deepest depth and greatest diversity. Not Babylon of old, whose name is the
synonym of all that is vile; not Rome, “Mother of Harlots,” not Corinth, in
whose temple a thousand women were kept for prostitution in service of the
god, not the most savage lands in all their barbarity have ever shown a
thousandth part of the human woe to be found in the city of London, that
culmination of modern christian civilization. The nameless crimes of
Sodom and Gomorrah, the vileness of ancient Greece, which garnered its
most heroic men, its most profound philosophers, are but amusements
among young men of the highest rank in England; West End, the home of
rank and wealth, of university education, being the central hell of this
extended radius of vice. The destruction of girl-children by old men is
paralleled by the self-destruction of boys and youth through vices that
society hesitates to name. Yet each is the result of that system of teaching

which declares a woman a being divinely created for the use and sensual
gratification of man.
Having for years tacitly consented to the destruction of the girl-children of
its poor, at the rate of twenty thousand annually, England was yet greatly
shocked to find its boys of tender age and aristocratic lineage sunken in a
mire of immorality. Eton, the highest institution of its kind in Great Britain,
having in charge the education of boys connected with the most illustrious
English families, recently became the source of a scandal which involved a
great number of students. An extensive secret inquiry resulted in the
suspension of nearly three hundred boys after full confession. Supplied with
unlimited pocket money, they had bribed parkkeepers and the police to
silence.
But a few years previous to these disclosures in reference to Eton, the
civilized world was horrified at the discovery of the vice which destroyed
Sodom, among some of the most wealthy, aristocratic young men of
London. And yet with knowledge of the depravity into which this most
christian city had sunk, the shocking character of the disclosures of the Pall
Mall Gazette in reference to the traffic in young girls, involved details of
vice so atrocious as to exceed belief had not the testimony been of the most
convincing character. These mere children were lured by the most
diabolical vices into traps, where by drugs, force, or cajoling, tens of
thousands were brought to moral and physical ruin, innocent victims of a
religious theory which through the christian ages has trained men into a
belief that woman was but created as a plaything for their passions. That
boys of the highest families, in the earliest years of their adolescence,
should voluntarily associate with those vicious women who form a class
created by the public sentiment of man as necessary to the safety of the
feminine element in households, is not surprising to a philosophic observer.
It was the direct result of an adequate cause. The wrong to woman passed
so silently by, reached its culmination in the destruction of young boys. At
Eton, suspension was tenderness, expulsion from that school ruining a boy’s
future.
Succeeding the revelation of London vice, came divulgence of similar
shameless practices on the part of high government officials and men
foremost in public life, in the Canadian Colonies. In Ottawa and other

Canadian cities in which upon this side of the Atlantic the wholesale
despoliation of young girls but too closely paralleled London and other
trans-Atlantic cities. These were closely followed by the revelations in
regard to the north-western pineries of the United States, to whose camps
women are decoyed, under pretense of good situations and high wages into
a life whose horrors are not equaled in any other part of the christian world;
where the raw-hide is used to compel drinking and dancing, and high
stockades, bull-dogs and pistols prevent escape, until death—happily of
quick occurrence—releases the victim. As elsewhere, men of wealth and
high position, law-makers, are identified with this infamy.[84]
Among the notable facts due to an investigation of prostitution is that its
support largely comes from married men, the “heads of families”; men of
mature years, fathers of sons and daughters. To those seemingly least
exposed to temptation is the sustaining of this vice due. Men of influence
and position no less in this country than in England frequent disreputable
houses. In 1878, the body of a woman buried in the principal cemetery of
Syracuse, N.Y. was exhumed on suspicion of poison. One of the prominent
city dailies said, “she commenced leading an abandoned life and went to
Saratoga where she ran a large establishment of that character. Her place
was the center for men of influence and position.” A few years since the
Rev. T. DeWitt Talmage accompanied by high police officials investigated
such houses in person. In a sermon based upon knowledge there obtained
Mr. Talmage declared those dens of infamy to be supported by married
men, chiefly of the better classes.
He found them to be judges of courts, distinguished lawyers, officers in
churches, political orators that talk on the Republican, Democratic and
Greenback platforms about God and good morals till you might almost
take them for evangelists expecting a thousand converts in one night.
On the night of our exploration I saw their carriages leaving these
dignitaries at the shambles of death. Call the roll in the house of
dissipation, and if the inmates will answer you will find stock-brokers
from Wall street, large importers on Broadway, iron merchants, leather
merchants, wholesale grocers and representatives from all the wealthy
classes.

But I have something to tell you more astonishing than that the houses
of iniquity are supported by wealthy people when I tell you that they are
supported by the heads of families—fathers and husbands, with the
awful perjury upon them of broken marriage vows; and while many of
them keep their families on niggardly portions, with hardly enough to
sustain life, have their thousands for the diamonds and the wardrobe and
equipage of iniquity. In the name of high heaven I cry out against this
popular iniquity. Such men must be cast out from social life and from
business relations. If they will not reform, overboard with them from all
decent circles. I lift one-half the burden of malediction from the un-
pitied head of woman and hurl it upon the blasted pate of offending
man. What society wants is a new division of its anathema.
Without the support of the heads of families, in one month the most of
the haunts of sin in New York, Philadelphia and Boston, would crumble
into ruin.
That one-half of the children born into the world die before maturity, is
acknowledged. Physiologists and philanthropists seek for the cause except
where most likely to be found. To that mysterious interchange of germs and
life principles, whose chemistry is still not understood, must we look for aid
in solving this great problem. These questions woman is forced to consider;
their investigation belong to her by right, as she and her children are the
chief victims. She can no longer close her lips in silence, saying it does not
concern me. No longer does the modern woman allow her husband to think
for her; she is breaking from church bonds, from the laws of men alone,
from all the restrictions the state has pressed upon her; she is no longer
looking without, for guidance, but is heeding the commands of her own
soul.
With such facts before us, we are not surprised that women are found who
prefer the freedom and private respect accorded to a mistress, rather than
the restrictions and tyranny of the marital household. Mr. Talmage but
followed in the footsteps of Anna Dickinson, who took upon herself an
acquaintance with this class of women. Asking one woman living as
mistress why she did not marry, the girl contemptuously ejaculated:

Marry! umph! I too well know what my mother suffered in the married
state. She was my father’s slave, cruelly treated, subject to all manner of
abuse, neglected, halfstarved, all her appeals and protests unheeded.
How is it with me? I am free. I have all the money I want to use, a thing
my mother never had. I come and go as I please, something my mother
could never do. I am well treated, my mother was not. Should I be
abused there is no law to hold me, no court to sit upon my right to my
own child as there was with my mother. No, no, no, I am infinitely
better off as a mistress than as a wife.
And yet so pronounced in difference are the moral codes by which men and
women are judged, that while living together in unlegalized marital
relations, the man is welcomed into society, is looked upon as fit for
marriage with the most innocent young girl, while should he partially
condone the wrong done the woman whose life under present condition of
society he has ruined, by marriage with her, society for this one reputable
act brands him as most unworthy. It is but a few years since a cavalry
officer in Washington was court-martialled, found guilty and sentenced to
dismissal from the army on charge of conduct unbecoming an officer and a
gentleman, because of his legally marrying a woman with whom he had
been living un-married. What a commentary upon christian civilization!
While living an illicit relation with this woman, he was regarded as an
officer and a gentleman; when taking upon himself a legal relation he was
court-martialled. Lecky says: “Much of our own feeling on this subject is
due to laws and moral systems which were founded by men and were in the
first instance designed for their own protection.” As far as he has examined
this question, Lecky is correct, but he has failed to touch the primal cause of
such laws and systems—the church doctrine of woman’s created inferiority
to man. View these questions from any stand-point the cause remains the
same. To this cause we trace the crime and criminals of society today. To
this cause the darkness of an age which has not yet realized that civilization
means a recognition of the rights of others at every point of contact.
To the honor of the pulpit the sins of men are occasionally made the subject
of condemnation. Evangelist Davidson preaching in Syracuse, N.Y. 1887,
said:

I pray God to haste the day when vice in man will be marked by society
the same as in woman. I know all the popular theories. You admit it is a
fearful thing for a woman. There are poor women who are driven to it
and you are the ones who drive them. You smile at the one thing in this
sermon that ought to make a thinking man cry; the world is so depraved
that you laugh at the very idea of a man’s saying he is a pure man.
Like Lecky, Mr. Davidson was correct as far as he went, but he, too, failed
to reach the cause of this double code of morals. He did not touch it because
in striking that, he would strike a blow at the very foundations of the
church.
Christendom is percolated with immorality, large cities and small towns
alike giving daily proof. Legislative and police investigations substantiate
this statement; woman’s protective agencies and private investigations alike
proclaim the same fact. As under the same organic teachings results must
continue the same, we find the United States no more free from immorality
than European lands; Catholic countries no more vile than Protestant;
although feudal law no longer exists, men still rule in church and state.
Men’s beliefs, their desires, their passions, create the laws under which the
degradation of woman still continues. Evil consequences are not confined to
the past, to days of comparative ignorance and tyranny; and in no country
has the effect of belief in woman as a mere instrument for men’s pleasure
produced more horrible results than in our own. Not to speak of the effort
made in Congress a few years since to place all women of the country under
suspect law, many cities, among them Washington, Philadelphia, Syracuse,
[85]
have at different periods taken initial steps towards a prohibition of a
woman’s appearing in the street un-accompanied by male escort, during the
evening, even its earliest hours. Such ordinances, primarily directed against
working girls whose chief time for out of door exercise and recreation is
during evening hours, and to that other rapidly increasing class of business
women, physicians and others, whose vocation calls them out at all hours of
day or night; places the liberty of woman at the option of every policeman,
as though she were a criminal or a slave.[86] There is also proof of regularly
organized kidnapping schemes and deportation of girls for the vilest
purposes not only abroad, but to the pineries and lumber camps of Michigan
and Wisconsin.

Bloodhounds kept for this purpose, or hunting down the girls with shotguns,
prevents escape when attempted. In January, 1887, representative Breen
appeared before the House Judiciary Committee of the Michigan
legislature, confirming the charge that a regular trade in young girls existed
between Milwaukee, Chicago and the mining regions of the upper peninsula
of that state.[87] In case of conviction, the punishment is totally inadequate
to the crime of those men; the law giving only one year of imprisonment.
The freedom, innocence and lives of such women are of less account in law
than the commonest larceny of property. If these girls were robbed of fifty
cents the law would punish the theft, but robbed of themselves, enduring
such brutal outrages that life continues only from two to twelve months,
there have yet no laws of adequate punishment been passed. So little
attention have legislators given, that policemen, judges and sheriffs are
found aiding and abetting the proprietors of these dens.[88] Their emissaries
find young girls between thirteen and sixteen the easiest to kidnap, and
when once in power of these men, their hair is cut in order that they may be
known. A regular system of transfer of the girls exists between the many
hundred such dens, where clubs, whips, and irons are the instruments to
hold them in subjection.[89] The New York World sent a representative
disguised as a woodman in order to investigate the truth of these statements.
He found these houses surrounded by stockades thirty feet in height, the one
door guarded night and day by a man with a rifle, while within were a
number of chained bull-dogs that were let loose if a girl attempted escape.
Certain men even in these forest depths are especially noted for their cruelty
to these victims, who are compelled with club and whips to obey the master
of the den. Suicide the only door of escape is frequent among these girls,
who almost without exception were secured under promise of respectable
employment at Green Bay, Duluth, or other points. From forty to seventy-
five girls are found at the largest of such pinery dens.
The World reporter saw them strung up by the thumbs, beaten with clubs,
kicked by drunken brutes and driven with switches over the snow. He
afterwards interviewed a rescued girl who had engaged to work in a
lumberman’s hotel, supposing it to be a respectable place, but instead she
was taken to a rough building, surrounded by a slab fence nearly twenty
feet in height, within which was a cordon of thirteen bull dogs chained to
iron stakes driven in the ground. Many of the details given by this girl are

too horrible for relation. Three times she tried to escape and three times she
was caught and beaten. The visitors by whom she tried to smuggle notes to
the outer world would hand them to the proprietor, who liberally paid for
such treason. Even county officers visited the place to drink and dance with
the girls, who were not permitted to refuse any request of the visitors. A
complaint of any kind, even of sickness, meant a whipping, frequently with
a rawhide upon the naked body; some times with the butt of a revolver.
Many den-keepers wield a powerful influence in the local elections; one of
the worst of such after paying the constable twelve dollars for the return of
a girl who had tried to escape, beat her with a revolver until tired and was
then only prevented by a woodman from turning loose a bull dog upon her;
but such was his political influence that he was elected justice of the peace
the following spring.
Under the head of “White Slaves in Michigan” the New York World of
January 24, 1887, published a special dispatch from Detroit, Mich., in
regard to the case of a rescued girl.
DETROIT, Jan. 23.—One of the infamous resorts maintained in the new
iron region in the upper peninsulas, near the Wisconsin state line, was
raided last September by the Sheriff’s officers. Hers is the first word to
reach the world direct from one of those dens. Many of the details she
gave were too horrible to be even hinted. On the strength of
inducements now familiar, she went to work in a lumberman’s hotel in
the North. She went, accompanied by another girl, both believing the
situation to be respectable. She and her companion were taken to a
rough two story building, four and a half miles from Iron Mountain, in
Wisconsin. The house was surrounded by a slab fence nearly twenty
feet high, within which about the building was a cordon of bull dogs,
thirteen in number, chained to iron stakes driven into the ground. She
said, “Scarcely a day passed that I was not knocked down and kicked.
Several times when I was undressed for bed I was beaten with a
rawhide on my bare back. There were always from eleven to thirty-two
girls in the house and I did not fare a bit worse than the rest. A
complaint of any kind, even of sickness, meant a whipping every time.
When the log drives were going on there would be hundreds of men
there night and day. They were not human beings, but fiends, and we
were not allowed to refuse any request of them. Oh, it was awful, awful!

I would rather stay in this prison until I die than to go back there for one
day. I tried to escape three times and was caught. They unchained the
dogs and let them get so near me that I cried out in terror and begged
them to take the dogs away and I would go back. Then, of course, I was
beaten. I tried, too, to smuggle out notes to the Sheriff by visitors, but
they would take them to the proprietor instead and he would pay them.
Once I did get a note to the deputy sheriff at Florence, Wis., and he
came and inquired, but the proprietor gave him $50 and he went away. I
was awfully beaten then. While I lived the life, from March until
September, two inmates died, both from brutal treatment. They were as
good as murdered. Nearly all the girls came without knowing the
character of the house at first implored to get away. The county officers
came to the places to drink and dance with the girls. They are controlled
by a rich man in Iron Mountain, who owns the houses and rents them
for a00 a month. I am twenty-four years old and was a healthy woman
when I went into the first house, weighing 156 pounds. I was transferred
to the house from which I was released by the officers in August last.
When I left it I weighed 120. I now weigh less. When I go home I will
be a good woman, if I can only let liquor alone. I was forced to drink
that while there.”
The traffic in girls from one part of the American continent to another is
under a well organized plan that seldom meets discovery, although a trader
of this character is now serving a sentence in Sing Sing prison, N.Y., for
sending girls to Panama. Three decoyed young girls found in Jamaica, were
happily returned uninjured, to their parents.[90] From Canada, girls are
imported to the large cities of the United States. The prices paid to agents
depend upon a girl’s youth and beauty, varying from $20 to $200 each.[91]
The traffic at Ottawa resembled that of London in that prominent citizens,
leading politicians, and members of the government were implicated.[92]
The number of women and girls constantly reported “missing” is startling in
its great extent. Stepping out on some household errand for a moment they
vanish as though swallowed by the earth. A few years ago the Chicago
Herald sent one of its reporters into the pineries of Wisconsin, to trace a
little girl living on State street of that city who went one evening to get a
pitcher of milk and did not return. Not a month, scarcely a week passes, that

the disappearance of some woman, girl, or child, is not chronicled through
the press, besides the infinitely greater numbers of whom the world never
hears. As it was abroad, so in our own country, no energetic steps are taken
to put an end to these foul wrongs. Woman herself is needed in the seats of
justice; woman must become a responsible factor in government in order to
the enactment of laws which shall protect her own sex. The spring of 1892,
the Chicago Herald called attention to the continuance of this condition of
things.
MARINETTE, Wis., April 17.—Four years ago when the Herald
exposed the pinery dens of Wisconsin, Marinette was known as the
wickedest city in the country. It was the rendezvous of every species of
bad men. Thugs, thieves and gamblers practically held possession of the
town. Their influence was felt in all municipal affairs. Certain officers
of the law seemed in active sympathy with them, and it was almost
impossible to secure the arrest and conviction of men guilty of infamous
crimes. Dives of the vilest character ran open on the outskirts of the
town. Their inmates, recruited from all parts of the country by the subtle
arts of well known procurers, were kept in a state of abject slavery. Iron
balls and chains, suffocating cords and the whistling lash were used on
refractory girls and women. The dens were surrounded by stockades,
and savage dogs were kept unmuzzled to scare those who might try to
escape. Bodies of ill-starred victims were sometimes found in the
woods, but the discovery was rarely followed by investigation. The dive
keepers were wealthy and knew how to ease the conscience of any over-
zealous officer.
The outburst of indignation which followed the Herald’s exposure
compelled certain reforms in the neighborhood. Sporadic efforts were
made to clean out the criminal element; restrictions were placed on
saloons and gambling houses; stockades and bloodhounds were
removed from the dives near the woods, and gradually an air of semi-
decency crept over the district. But the snake was scotched, not killed.
For a time more attention was paid to the proprieties, vice and crime
were not so open as formerly. By degrees, however, the old conditions
assumed sway again. Games of every kind were run openly night and
day, dives and dance halls have been thronged and the usual quota of
men from the woods deliberately robbed of their winter’s savings.

Man’s assertion that he protects woman is false. Under laws solely enacted
by men young girls in christian countries are held as assenting to their own
degradation at an age so tender that their evidence would not be received in
courts of law. Nor are these the laws of a remote age come down to the
present time. As late as 1889, the Kansas State Senate voted 25 to 9 that a
girl of twelve years was of sufficiently responsible age “to consent” to take
the first step in immorality; the same senate afterwards unanimously voting
that a boy of sixteen years was not old enough to decide for himself in
regard to smoking cigarettes.[93] It should be remembered that youth is the
most impressible season of life as well as the most inexperienced. Young
girls from thirteen to sixteen, mere children, are most easily decoyed, their
youth and innocence causing them to fall the readiest prey; and scarcely a
large city but proves the existence of men of mature years whose aim is the
destruction of such young girls.[94] The state of Delaware yet more
infamous, still retaining seven years as the “age of consent.” Seven short
years of baby life in that state is legally held to transform a girl-infant into a
being with capacity to consent to an act of which she neither knows the
name nor the consequences, her “consent” freeing from responsibility or
punishment, the villain, youthful or aged, who chooses to assault such baby
victim of man-made laws.[95] While the doors of irresponsible vice are
legally thrown open to men of all ages with girl victims as their prey, the
restrictions against marriage with a minor without the parents’ consent are
in most states very severe. That the girl-wife herself has consented to the
marriage ceremony is of no weight. Where a legitimate union is under
consideration she is held as possessing no power to form a contract and can
be arrested under a writ of habeas corpus, and kept from her husband at her
father’s pleasure. Instances have also occurred where the wife has been
punished by him for thus daring to marry.[96] Both the husband and the
officiating clergyman are also held amenable, the former under charge of
abduction, the latter as an accessory in performing the marriage ceremony.
A significant fact is the rapid increase of child criminals throughout
christendom; Germany, France and England showing one hundred per cent
within ten years, while in the United States more than one-half the inmates
of state prisons are under thirty years of age. From criminals it is necessary
to look back to crime-making men sitting in earth’s loftiest places, and note
the fact that crime germs are not alone generated with the child, but that

through the gestative period the mother, a religious and legal slave,
struggles between a newly awakened sense of that responsibility which
within the last four decades has come to woman, and the crushing influence
of religious, political and family despotism which still overshadows her.
Moralists have long striven for the suppression of immorality by efforts
directed to the reformation of corrupt women alone; for two reasons they
have been unsuccessful.
First: the majority of women entering this life are found to have done so
under the pressure of abject poverty, and as long as the conditions of society
continue to foster poverty for woman it was impossible to create a marked
change in morals.
Second: all efforts were directed towards the smallest and least culpable
class, as it has been proven that ten men of immoral life are required for the
support of one woman of like character. In London alone with its population
of five millions, 100,000 women, one-fiftieth of its population are thus
enumerated, requiring 1,000,000 men, one-fifth of its population, for their
support. Recognizing the fact that men, not women, were most sunken in
vice, the number leading vicious lives very much larger, the degradation of
these men very much greater, an Italian lady, Madam Venturi, at the
International Conference of the British Continental and General Federation
for the abolition of governmental regulation of prostitution, while making a
brief eloquent address upon the general subject of rescue work, referred to
the great importance of reclaiming men as the fundamental work upon
which others should be built up. Teach men, she said, to understand that he
who degrades a fellow creature, commits a crime, the crime of high treason
against humanity. In quick response to those fitly-spoken words, the women
of many countries combined in the work of man’s reformation in an
organization known as the “White Cross Society” founded in 1886, by Miss
Ellice Hopkins of England, and now possessing branches in every part of
the civilized world.[97] To this society, men alone belong; its work is of a
still broader character than mere reformation of the vicious; it seeks to train
young men and boys to a proper respect for woman and for themselves.
As the world is indebted to Christine of Pisa for the first public protest
against the immorality of christendom, so to Mrs. Josephine Butler,[98]
Madam Venturi, and Miss Ellice Hopkins are due the inauguration of a new

moral standard for man whose results must be of incalculable value to the
world. The “White Cross” is a simply organized society without an
admission fee, but requiring adherence to a five-fold obligation binding its
members to purity of thought and action,[99] and maintaining that the law of
chastity is equally binding on men and women. The International
Federation, a union existing in several European countries, its chief object,
work against state protection of vice, roused public thought in this direction
as never before. People began to comprehend that a large vicious class was
common to every community, a class whose reclamation had never been
systematically attempted, never thought necessary or even deemed possible,
because of the religious and social training that taught indulgence in vice to
be a necessity of man’s nature; and the co-ordinate statement, that
protection to the majority of women was to be secured only through the
debasement and moral degradation of the minority. For many hundreds of
years this has been man’s treatment of the question of vice in Christian
lands.
But as soon as advancing civilization permitted woman’s thought to be
publicly heard, vice in man was declared to be upon the same basis as vice
in woman. Had not man been trained by his religion into a belief that
woman was created for him, had not the church for 1800 and more years
preached woman’s moral debasement, the long course of legislation for
them as slaves would never have taken place, nor the obstacles in way of
change been so numerous and so persistent. For nine years the Criminal
Reform Act was before Parliament. During that period, petitions, speeches
and appeals of every kind in favor of its passage were made by those
outside the halls of legislation aided by a few honest men within. But the
vicious and immoral fought the act with energy, despite the fact that the
women of their own families were exposed to destruction through
government protected iniquity. The bitter opposition by legislators to this
act, is an additional proof that woman cannot trust man in the state to any
greater extent than in the church.
Until woman holds political power in her own hands, her efforts for
protective legislation will be arduous and protracted. Among the customs of
the early christian church, we are able to trace the inception of marquette,
the mundium, the legalization of vice and crimes of kindred character. With
exception of among some savage races, that woman should appear

unclothed before man, has been regarded as evidence of the deepest
sensuality, yet throughout the history of Christianity from its earliest years
when women were required to divest themselves of clothing before baptism
down to the Endowment House ceremonies of the Mormon Church, we
constantly find proof of like sensual exactions by the “Fathers,” priests and
lay masculinity of the church. During the earliest days of christianity,
women were baptized quite nude, in the presence of men, by men, their
bodies being afterwards anointed with oil by the priest who had baptized
them. One of the earliest schisms in the church arose from the protest of
women against this indignity, their demand to be allowed to baptize those of
their own sex, and the opposition of men to this demand.[100]
The early bishops of the church strenuously used their influence against the
baptism of nude women by elders of their own sex. Women were sometimes
brought entirely nude upon the stage at Rome, but it was in connection with
religious representation, the theater at that period being an element of
religious teaching. Lecky speaks of the undisguised sensuality of this
practice.[101] What must be our conception of a christian custom that placed
nude maidens and wives in the very hands of men, not alone for baptism but
also for anointing with oil? Nude baptism is still practiced when converts
are received into the Greek church, no position or station in life excusing
from it, Catharine, the first wife of Peter the Great being baptized in this
primitive christian manner.[102] As late as the seventeenth century a work
upon the “Seven Sacraments” set certain days in which female penitents
were to appear entirely unclothed before the confessor in order that he
might discipline them on account of their sins.

Chapter Five

Witchcraft

Although toward the beginning of the IV century, people began to speak of
the nocturnal meeting of witches and sorcerers, under the name of
“Assembly of Diana,” or “Herodia,” it was not until canon or church law,
had become quite engrafted upon the civil law, that the full persecution for
witchcraft arose. A witch was held to be a woman who had deliberately sold
herself to the evil one; who delighted in injuring others, and who, for the
purpose of enhancing the enormity of her evil acts, choose the Sabbath day
for the performance of her most impious rites, and to whom all black
animals had special relationship; the black cat in many countries being held
as her principal familiar. “To go to the Sabbath” signified taking part in
witch orgies. The possession of a pet of any kind at this period was
dangerous to woman. One who had tamed a frog, was condemned to be
burned in consequence, the harmless amphibian being looked upon as a
familiar of Satan. The devil ever being depicted in sermon or story as black,
all black animals by an easy transition of ideas, became associated with evil
and witches.[1] Although I have referred to witchcraft as having taken on a
new phase soon after the confirmation of celibacy as a dogma of the church
by the Lateran Council of 1215, it yet requires a chapter by itself, in order
to show to what proportions this form of heresy arose, and the method of
the church in its treatment. This period was the age of supreme despair for
woman,[2] death by fire being the common form of witch punishment.
Black cats were frequently burned with a witch at the stake;[3] during the
reign of Louis XV of France, sacks of condemned cats were burned upon
the public square devoted to witch torture. Cats and witches are found
depicted together in a curious cut on the title page of a book printed in
1621. The proverbial “nine lives” of a cat were associated in the minds of
people with the universally believed possible metamorphosis of a witch into
a cat.[4] So firmly did the diabolical nature of the black cat impress itself
upon the people, that its effects are felt in business to this day, the skin of

black cats being less prized and of less value in the fur market than those of
other colors. A curious exemplification of this inherited belief is found in
Great Britain. An English taxidermist who exports thousands of mounted
kittens each year to the United States and other countries, finds the
prejudice against black cats still so great that he will not purchase kittens of
this obnoxious color.[5] In the minds of many people, black seems
ineradicably connected with sorcery.
In the Folk Lore of Cats, it is stated that as recently as 1867 a woman was
publicly accused of witchcraft in the state of Pennsylvania on account of
her administering three drops of a black cat’s blood to a child as a remedy
for the croup. She admitted the fact but denied that witchcraft had anything
to do with it, and twenty witnesses were called to prove its success as a
remedy. From an early period the belief in metamorphosis by means of
magical power was common throughout christendom. St. Augustine
relates[6] that “hostesses or innkeepers sometimes put confections into a
kind of cheese made by them, and travelers eating thereof, were presently
metamorphosed into laboring beasts, as horses, asses or oxen.” It was also
believed that the power of changing into various animals was possessed by
witches themselves.[7] At the present day under certain forms of insanity
persons imagine themselves to be animals, birds, and even inanimate things,
as glass; but usually those hallucinations occur in isolated instances. But
among the strange epidemics which have at various times affected
christendom, none is more singular than that Lycanthropia, or wolf
madness, which attacked such multitudes of inhabitants of the Jura in 1600,
as to become a source of great public danger. The affected persons walked
upon their feet and hands until their palms became hard and horny. They
howled like wolves, and as wolves do they hunted in packs, murdering and
devouring many children, nor could the most severe punishment put an end
to this general madness. Six hundred persons were executed upon their own
confessions, which included admissions of compact with the devil,
attendance upon the Sabbath and cannibal feasting upon a mountain, the
devil having used his power for their transmutation into wolves.[8] Witches
were believed to ride through the air upon animals or bits of wood. The fact
of their possession of such powers is asserted by many writers, the usual
method of transportation being a goat, night crow or enchanted staff.[9] The
rhyming Mother Goose question:

Old woman, old woman, oh whither, oh whither so high?

And its rhyming answer:
To sweep the cobwebs from the sky,
And I’ll be back by and by,

doubtless owes its origin to the witchcraft period.
A song said to be in use during witch dances ran:
Har, Har, Diabole, Diabole; Sali huc, Sali illuc; Lude hic, Lude illic; Sabaoth, Sabaoth.

Although the confirmation by the church in the XIII century of the supreme
holiness of celibacy inaugurated a new era of persecution for witchcraft, a
belief in its existence had from the earliest times been a doctrine of the
church, Augustine, as shown, giving the weight of his authority in favor.
But to the Christian Emperor Charlemagne, in the eighth century, the first
use of torture in accusation of witchcraft is due. This great emperor while
defying the power of the pope, over whom he even claimed jurisdiction,
was himself a religious autocrat whose severity exceeded even that of the
papal throne. Torture was rapidly adopted over Europe, and soon became
general in the church; the council of Salzburg, 799, publicly ordering its use
in witch trials.
A new era of persecution and increased priestly power dates to the reign of
Charlemagne, who although holding himself superior to the pope, as
regarded independent action, greatly enlarged the dominion of the church
and power of the priesthood. He forced Christianity upon the Saxons at
immense sacrifice of life, added to the wealth and power of the clergy by
tithe lands, recognized their judicial and canonical authority, made marriage
illegal without priestly sanction and still further degraded womanhood
through his own polygamy. Although himself of such wanton life, he yet
caused a woman of the town to be dragged naked through the city streets,
subject to all the cruel tortures of an accompanying mob.
In the ninth century the power of the pope was again greatly increased. Up
to this period he had been elected by the clergy and people of Rome, and
the approbation of the emperor was necessary to confirm it. But Charles the
Bald, 875, relinquished all right of jurisdiction over Rome, and thereafter
the Roman Pontiff became an acknowledged if not sometimes a supreme

power in the appointment of temporal princes. The power of bishops,
clergy, and cardinals diminished as that of the pope increased.
Notwithstanding her claims of power through St. Peter, it has been by
gradual steps that Rome has decided upon her policy and established her
dogmas. It is but little over four decades, at the Ecumenical of 1849, that
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, was first
authoritatively promulgated, although her worship had long existed, being
traceable to the Egyptian doctrine of the trinity, with the substitution of
Mary in place of Isis. It was not until 1085 that Hildebrand, Pope Gregory
VII, declared matrimony a sacrament of the church; and not until 1415, at
the Council of Trent, that extreme unction was instituted and defined as a
sacrament. Each of these dogmas threw more power into the hands of the
church, and greater wealth into her coffers. Thus we see the degeneration of
Christianity has had its epochs. One occurred when the Council of Nice
allowed chance to dictate which would be considered the canonical books
of the New Testament, accepting some theretofore regarded as of doubtful
authenticity and rejecting others that had been universally conceded
genuine.[10] Another epoch of degeneration occurs when the State in the
person of the great emperor Charlemagne added to the power of the Church
by the establishment of torture, whose extremest use fell upon that portion
of humanity looked upon as the direct embodiment of evil. The peculiar
character attributed to woman by the church, led to the adoption of torture
as a necessary method of forcing her to speak the truth. The testimony of
two, and in some countries, three women being held as only equal to that of
one man. At first, young children and women expecting motherhood, were
exempted, but afterwards neither age or condition freed from accusation
and torture, and women even in the pangs of maternity were burned at the
stake,[11] Christianity in this respect showing much more barbarity than
pagan nations. In pagan Rome the expectant mother was held sacred; to vex
or disturb her mind was punishable, to strike her was death. She even
possessed a right pertaining to the Vestal Virgins; if meeting a condemned
criminal on his way to execution, her word sufficed for his pardon. It
scarcely seems possible, yet in some christian countries the most prominent
class subjected to the torture, were women expecting motherhood.
Christianity became the religion of Iceland A.D., 1000, and by the earliest
extant law, the “Gragas,” dating to 1119, we find that while torture was

prescribed in but few instances yet the class principally subjected to it, were
women about to become mothers. But generally throughout Europe, until
about the XIV century, when priestly celibacy had become firmly
established and the Inquisition connected with the state, a class consisting
of nobles, doctors of the law, pregnant women, and children under fourteen,
were exempt from torture except in case of high treason and a few other
offenses. But at a later period when these institutions had greatly increased
the irresponsible power of the church, we find neither sex, condition nor
age, free from its infliction, both state and church uniting in its use.
In Venetian Folk Lore, it is stated that Satan once became furious with the
Lord because paradise contained more souls than hell, and he determined
by fine promises to seduce human beings to his worship and thus fill his
kingdom. He decided to always tempt women instead of men, because
through ambition or a desire for revenge, they yield more easily. This
legend recalls the biblical story of Satan taunting the Lord with the selfish
nature of Job’s goodness, and receiving from God the permission to try him.
Witchcraft was regarded as a sin almost confined to women. The Witch
Hammer declared the very word femina meant one wanting in faith. A
wizard was rare; one writer declaring that to every hundred witches but one
wizard was found. In time of Louis XV this difference was greatly
increased; “To one wizard 10,000 witches”; another writer asserted there
were 100,000 witches in France alone. The great inquisitor Sprenger, author
of the “Witch Hammer” and through whose instrumentality many countries
were filled with victims, largely promoted this belief. “Heresy of witches,
not of wizards[12] must we call it, for these latter are of very small account.”
No class or condition of women escaped him; we read of young children,
old people, infants, witches of fifteen years, and two “infernally beautiful”
of seventeen years. Although the ordeal of the red hot iron fell into disuse in
the secular courts early in the fourteenth century, (1329),[13] ecclesiasticism
preserved it in case of women accused of witchcraft for one hundred and
fifty years longer.[14] One of the peculiarities of witchcraft accusations, was
that protestations of innocence, and a submission to ordeals such as had
always vindicated those taking part in them if passing through unharmed,
did not clear a woman charged with witchcraft, who was then accused with
having received direct help from Satan. The maxim of secular law that the
torture which did not produce confession entitled the accused to full

acquittal was not in force under ecclesiastical indictments, and the person
accused of witchcraft was always liable to be tried again for the same
crime. Every safeguard of law was violated in case of woman, even Magna
Charta forbidding appeal to her except in case of her husband.
Before the introduction of Christianity, no capital punishment existed, in the
modern acceptation of the term, except for witchcraft. But pagans unlike
christians, did not look upon women as more given to this practice than
men; witches and wizards were alike stoned to death. But as soon as a
system of religion was adopted which taught the greater sinfulness of
women, over whom authority had been given to man by God himself, the
saying arose “one wizard to 10,000 witches,” and the persecution for
witchcraft became chiefly directed against women. The church degraded
woman by destroying her self-respect, and teaching her to feel
consciousness of guilt in the very fact of her existence.[15] The extreme
wickedness of woman, taught as a cardinal doctrine of the church, created
the belief that she was desirous of destroying all religion, witchcraft being
regarded as her strongest weapon,[16] therefore no punishment for it was
thought too severe. The teaching of the church, as to the creation of women
and the origin of evil, embodied the ordinary belief of the christian peoples,
and that woman rather than man practiced this sin, was attributed by the
church to her original sinful nature, which led her to disobey God’s first
command in Eden.[17]
Although witchcraft was treated as a crime against the state, it was regarded
as a greater sin against heaven, the bible having set its seal of disapproval in
the injunction “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” The church therefore
claimed its control. When coming under ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
witchcraft was much more strenuously dealt with than when it fell under lay
tribunals. It soon proved a great source of emolument to the church, which
grew enormously rich by its confiscation to its own use of all property of
the condemned. Sprenger, whose work (“The Witch Hammer”), was
devoted to methods of dealing with this sin, was printed in size convenient
for carrying in the pocket.[18] It based its authority upon the bible, twenty-
three pages being devoted to proving that women were especially addicted
to sorcery. This work was sanctioned by the pope, but after the reformation
became equally authoritative in protestant as in catholic countries, not

losing its power for evil until the XVIII century. A body of men known as
“Traveling Witch Inquisitors,” of whom Sprenger was chief, journeyed
from country to country throughout christendom, in search of victims for
torture and death. Their entrance into a country or city was regarded with
more fear than famine or pestilence, especially by women, against whom
their malignity was chiefly directed, Sprenger, the great authority, declaring
that her name signified evil; “the very word femina, (woman), meaning one
wanting in faith, for fe means faith, and minus less.”[19] The reformation
caused no diminution in its use, the protestant clergy equally with the
catholic constantly appealing to its pages. Still another class known as
“Witch Finders,” or “Witch Persecutors” confined their work to their own
neighborhoods. Of these, Cardan, a famous Italian physician, said:
“In order to obtain forfeit property, the same persons act as accusers and
judges, and invent a thousand stories as proof.”[20] The love of power, and
the love of money formed a most hideous combination for evil in the
church; not a christian country but was full of the horrors of witch
persecutions and violent deaths. During the reign of Francis I more than
100,000 witches were put to death, mostly by burning, in France alone.
Christ was invoked as authority, the square devoted to Auto da Fe, being
known as, “The Burning Place of the Cross.”
The Parliament of Toulouse burned 400 witches at one time. Four hundred
women at one hour on the public square, dying the horrid death of fire for a
crime which never existed save in the imagination of those persecutors and
which grew in their imagination from a false belief in woman’s
extraordinary wickedness, based upon a false theory as to original sin.
Remy, judge of Nancy, acknowledged to having burnt eight hundred in
sixteen years; at the rate of half a hundred a year. Many women were driven
to suicide in fear of the torture in store for them. In 1595 sixteen of those
accused by Remy, destroyed themselves rather than fall into his terrible
hands. Six hundred were burnt in one small bishopric in one year; nine
hundred during the same period in another. Seven thousand lost their lives
in Treves; a thousand in the province of Como, in Italy, in a single year; five
hundred were executed at Geneva, in a single month.
While written history does not fail to give abundant record in regard to the
number of such victims of the church, largely women whose lives were

forfeited by accusation of witchcraft, hundreds at one time dying
agonizingly by fire, a new and weird evidence as to the innumerable
multitude of these martyrs was of late most unexpectedly brought to light in
Spain. During a course of leveling and excavations for city improvements
in Madrid, recently, the workmen came upon the Quemadero de la Cruz.[21]
The cutting of a new road through that part of the city laid bare like
geological strata, long black layers super-imposed one above the other at
distances of one or two feet, in the sandstone and clay. Some of these layers
extended 150 feet in a horizontal direction, and were at first supposed to be
the actual discovery of new geological strata, which they closely resembled.
They proved to be the remains of inquisitorial burnings, where thousands of
human beings of all ages had perished by the torture of fire.[22] The layers
consisted of coal coagulated with human fat, bones, the remains of singed
hair, and the shreds of burnt garments. This discovery created great
excitement, people visiting the spot by thousands to satisfy themselves of
the fact, and to carry away some memento of that dark age of christian
cruelty, a cruelty largely exercised against the most helpless and innocent, a
cruelty having no parallel in the annals of paganism. Imagination fails to
conceive the condensed torture this spot of earth knew under the watchword
of “Christ and His Cross”; and that was but one of the hundreds, nay,
thousands of similar “Burning Places of the Cross,” with which every
christian country, city, and town was provided for many hundreds of years.
A most diabolical custom of the church made these burnings a holiday
spectacle. People thus grew to look unmoved upon the most atrocious
tortures, and excited crowds hung about witch burnings, eagerly listening as
the priests exhorted to confession, or tormented the dying victims with
pictures of an unending fire soon to be their fate.
An accusation of witchcraft struck all relatives of the accused with terror,
destroying the ordinary virtues of humanity in the hearts of nearest friends.
As it was maintained that devils possessed more than one in a family, each
member sought safety by aiding the church in accumulating proof against
the accused, in hopes thereby to escape similar charge. It is impossible for
us at the present day to conceive the awful horror falling upon a family into
which an accusation of witchcraft had come. Not alone the shame and
disgrace of such a charge; the terrors of a violent death under the most
painful form; the sudden hurling of the family from ease and affluence to

the most abject poverty; but above all the belief that unending torment by
fire pursued the lost soul through eternity, made a combination of terrors
appalling to the stoutest heart. A Scotch woman convicted as a witch and
sentenced to be burned alive could not be persuaded by either priest or
sheriff to admit her guilt. Suffering the intensest agonies of thirst during her
torture she espied her only son in the surrounding crowd. Imploring him in
the name of her love for him she begged as her last request, that he should
bring her a drink. He shook his head, not speaking; her fortitude her love,
his own most certain conviction of her innocence not touching him; when
she cried again, “Oh, my dear son, help me any drink, be it never so little,
for I am most extremely drie, oh drie, drie.” His answer to her agonizing
entreaties could not be credited were it not a subject of history, and the date
so recent. “By no means dear mother will I do you the wrong, for the drier
you are no doubt you will burn the better.”[23] Under Accadian law 3,000
years before christianity, the son who denied his father was sentenced to a
simple fine, but he who denied his mother was to be banished from the land
and sea;[24] but in the sixteenth century of the christian era, we find a son
under christian laws denying his mother a drink of water in her death agony
by fire.
Erskine says:
It was instituted in Scotland 1653, “that all who used witchcraft,
sorcery, necromancy, or pretended skill therein, shall be punished
capitally; upon which statute numberless innocent persons were tried
and burnt to death, upon evidence which, in place of affording
reasonable conviction to the judge, was fraught with absurdity and
superstition.”[25]
Thirty thousand persons accused of witchcraft were burned to death in
Germany and Italy alone, and although neither age nor sex was spared, yet
women and girls were the chief victims. Uncommon beauty was as
dangerous to a woman as the possession of great wealth, which brought
frequent accusations in order that the church might seize upon the witches’
property for its own use.
Children of the most tender years did not escape accusation and death.
During the height of witchcraft persecution, hundreds of little ones were

condemned as witches. Little girls of ten, eight, and seven years are
mentioned; blind girls, infants[26] and even young boys were among the
numbers who thus perished. Everywhere the most helpless classes were the
victims.
It was declared that witches looked no person steadily in the face, but
allowed their eyes to wander from side to side, or kept them fixed upon the
earth. To this assertion that a witch could not look any one in the face, the
present belief of a connection between guilt and a downcast look, is due;
although the church taught that a woman should preserve a downward look
in shame for the sin she had brought into the world, and to this day, an
open, confident look upon a woman’s face is deprecated as evil. Attendance
upon Sabbats[27] and control of the weather were among the accusations
brought against the witch. In Scotland a woman accused of raising a storm
by taking off her stockings, was put to death. Sprenger tells of a Swiss
farmer whose little daughter startled him by saying she could bring rain,
immediately raising a storm.[28]
Whatever the pretext made for witchcraft persecution we have abundant
proof that the so-called “witch” was among the most profoundly scientific
persons of the age. The church having forbidden its offices and all external
methods of knowledge to woman, was profoundly stirred with indignation
at her having through her own wisdom, penetrated into some of the most
deeply subtle secrets of nature: and it was a subject of debate during the
middle ages if learning for woman was not an additional capacity for evil,
as owing to her, knowledge had first been introduced in the world. In
penetrating into these arcana, woman trenched upon that mysterious hidden
knowledge of the church which it regarded as among its most potential
methods of controlling mankind. Scholars have invariably attributed
magical knowledge and practices to the church, popes and prelates of every
degree having been thus accused. The word “magic” or “wisdom” simply
meaning superior science, was attributed in the highest degree to King
Solomon, who ruled even the Elementals by means of his magic ring made
in accord with certain natural laws. He was said to have drawn his power
directly from God. Magi were known as late as the X century of this era.
Among their powers were casting out demons, the fearless use of poisons,
control of spirits and an acquaintance with many natural laws unknown to

the world at large. During the present century, the Abbé Constant (Eliphas
Levi), declared the Pentegram to be the key of the two worlds, and if rightly
understood, endowing man with infinite power. The empire of THE WILL
over the astral light is symbolized in magic by the Pentegram, the growth of
a personal will being the most important end to be attained in the history of
man’s evolution. The opposition of the church to this growth of the human
will in mankind, has ever been the most marked feature in its history. Under
WILL, man decides for himself, escaping from all control that hinders his
personal development.
It is only an innate and natural tendency of the soul to go beyond its
body to find material with which to clothe the life that it desires to give
expression to. The soul can and must be trained to do this consciously.
You can easily see that this power possessed consciously will give its
possessor power to work magic.
Ignorance and the anathemas of the church against knowledge to be gained
through an investigation of the more abstruse laws of nature, have invested
the word “magic” with terror. But magic simply means knowledge of the
effect of certain natural, but generally unknown laws; the secret operation
of natural causes, according to Bacon and other philosophers; consequences
resulting from control of the invisible powers of nature, such as are shown
in the electrical appliances of the day, which a few centuries since would
have been termed witchcraft. Seeking to compel the aid of spirits, was
understood as magic at an early day. Lenormant says the object of magic in
Chaldea, was to conjure the spirits giving minute description of the ancient
formula. Scientific knowledge in the hands of the church alone, was a great
element of spiritual and temporal power, aiding it in more fully subduing
the human will. The testimony of the ages entirely destroys the assertion
sometimes made that witchcraft was merely a species of hysteria. Every
discovery of science is a nearer step towards knowledge of the laws
governing “the Accursed Sciences,” as everything connected with psychic
power in possession of the laity was termed by the church. “Her seven
evidences for possession” included nearly all forms of mesmerism. All
modern investigations tend to prove what was called witchcraft, to have
been in most instances the action of psychic laws not yet fully understood.
An extremely suggestive article appeared in the January and February
numbers of The Path 1887, by C. H. A. Bjerregaard entitled, “The

Elementals and the Elementary Spirits.” In it Mr. Bjerregaard referred to the
Pacinian Corpuscles, the discovery of an Italian physician in 1830 and
1840. He said:
Pacini found in all the sensible nerves of the fingers many elliptical
whitish corpuscles. He compared them to the electrical organs of the
torpedo and described them as animal magneto-motors, or organs of
animal magnetism, and so did Henle and Holliker, two German
anatomists who have studied and described these corpuscles very
minutely.
In the human body they are found in great numbers in connection with
the nerves of the hand, also in those of the foot.... The ecstatic dances of
the enthusiasts and the not-sinking of somnambulists in water, or their
ability to use the soles of their feet as organs of perception, and the
ancient art of healing by the soles of the feet—all these facts explain the
mystery.
They are found sparingly on the spinal nerves, and on the plexuses of
the sympathetic, but never on the nerves of motion.... Anatomists are
interested in these Pacinian corpuscles because of the novel aspect in
which they present the constituent parts of the nerve-tube, placed in the
heart of a system of concentric membranous capsules with intervening
fluid, and divested of that layer which they (the anatomists) regard as an
isolator and protector of the more potential central axis within.
This apparatus—almost formed like a voltaic pile, is the instrument for
that peculiar vital energy, known more or less to all students as Animal
Magnetism.
Since the cat is somewhat famous in all witchcraft, let me state, that in
the mesentery of the cat, they can be seen in large numbers with the
naked eye, as small oval-shaped grains a little smaller than hemp-seeds.
A few have been found in the ox (symbol of the priestly office,) but they
are wanting in all birds, amphibia and fishes.
“Magic” whether brought about by the aid of spirits or simply through an
understanding of secret natural laws, is of two kinds, “white” and “black,”
according as its intent and consequences are evil or good, and in this respect

does not differ from the use made of the well known laws of nature, which
are ever of good or evil character, in the hands of good or evil persons. To
the church in its powerful control of the human will, must be attributed the
use of “black magic,” in its most injurious form. Proof that knowledge of
the mysterious laws governing ordinary natural phenomena still exists even
among civilized people, is indubitable. Our American Indians in various
portions of the continent, according to authorities, also possess power to
produce storms of thunder, lightning and rain.[29]
A vast amount of evidence exists, to show that the word “witch” formerly
signified a woman of superior knowledge. Many of the persons called
witches doubtless possessed a super-abundance of the Pacinian corpuscles
in hands and feet, enabling them to swim when cast into water bound, to
rise in the air against the ordinary action of gravity, to heal by a touch, and
in some instances to sink into a condition of catalepsy, perfectly
unconscious of torture when applied. Many were doubtless psychic
sensitives of high powers similar perhaps to the “Seeress of Prevorst,”
whose peculiar characteristics were the subject of investigation by Dr.
Kerner, about the end of the witch period, his report forming one of the
most mysteriously interesting portions of psychic literature. The “Seeress”
was able to perceive the hidden principles of all vegetable or mineral
substances, whether beneficial or injurious. Dr. Kerner stated that her
magnetic condition might be divided into four degrees.
First: that in which she ordinarily was when she appeared to be
awakened but on the contrary was the first stage of her inner life, many
persons of whom it was not expected and who was not aware of it
themselves, being in this state.
Second: the magnetic dream, which she believed to be the condition of
many persons who were regarded as insane.
Third: the half wakening state when she spoke and wrote the inner
language, her spirit then being in intimate conjunction with her soul.
Fourth: her clairvoyant state.
With the investigation of Dr. Kerner, the discoveries of Galvani, Pacini, and
those more recently connected with electricity, notably of Edison and

Nikolas Tesla, the world seems upon the eve of important knowledge which
may throw full light upon the peculiar nerve action of the witch period,
when a holocaust of women were sacrificed, victims of the ignorance and
barbarity of the church, which thus retarded civilization and delayed
spiritual progress for many hundred years. Besides the natural psychics who
formed a large proportion of the victims of this period, other women with a
natural spirit of investigation made scientific discoveries with equally
baleful effect upon themselves; the one fact of a woman’s possessing
knowledge serving to bring her under the suspicion and accusation of the
church. Henry More, a learned Cambridge graduate of the seventeenth
century wrote a treatise on witchcraft explanatory of the term “witch”
which he affirmed simply signified a wise, or learned woman. It meant
“uncommon” but not unlawful knowledge or skill. It will assist in forming
an opinion to know that the word “witch” is from wekken, to prophesy, a
direct bearing upon the psychic powers of many such persons. The modern
Slavonian or Russian name for witch, vjedma, is from the verb “to know”
signifying much the same as Veda.[30] Muller says Veda means the same as
the wise, “wisdom.” The Sanskrit word Vidma answers to the German wir
wissen, which literally means “we know.” A Russian name for the witch
Zaharku, is derived from the verb Znat, to know.[31] A curious account of
modern Russian belief in witchcraft is to be found in Madame Blavatsky’s
Isis Unveiled. The German word Heke, that is, witch, primarily signified
priestess, a wise or superior woman who in a sylvan temple worshiped
those gods and goddesses that together governed earth and heaven. Not
alone but with thousands of the people for whom she officiated she was
found there especially upon Walpurgis Night, the chief Hexen (witch)
Sabbat of the north. A German scholar furnished this explanation.
The German word Heke, (witch) is a compound word from “hag” and
“idisan” or “disan.” Hag means a beautiful landscape, woodland,
meadow, field, altogether. Idisen means female deities, wise-women.
Hexen-Sabbat, or Walpurgis Night is May twelfth. Perfume and
avocation—originally the old gods—perverted by the priests. It is a
remnant of the great gathering to worship the old deities, when
Christianity had overshadowed them. A monument of the wedding of
Woden or Odin with Freia—Sun and Earth at spring time.

The Saxon festival “Eostre,” the christian Easter, was celebrated in April,
each of these festivals at a time when winter having released its sway,
smiling earth giving her life to healing herbs and leaves, once more
welcomed her worshipers. In the south of Europe, the month of October
peculiarly belonged to the witches.[32] The first of May, May-day, was
especially devoted by those elementals known as fairies, whose special rites
were dances upon the green sward, leaving curious mementoes of their
visits in the circles known as “Fairies Rings.” In reality the original
meaning of “witch” was a wise woman. So also the word Sab means sage or
wise, and Saba a host or congregation;[33] while Bac, Boc and Bacchus[34]
all originally signified book.[35] Sabs was the name of the day when the
Celtic Druids gave instruction and is the origin of our words Sabbath and
Sunday. But the degradation of learning, its almost total loss among
christian nations, an entire change in the signification of words, owing to
ignorance and superstition led to the strangest and most infamous results.
The earliest doctors among the common people of christian Europe were
women[36] who had learned the virtues and use of herbs. The famous works
of Paracelsus were but compilations of the knowledge of these “wise
women” as he himself stated. During the feudal ages women were excellent
surgeons, wounded warriors frequently falling under their care and to the
skill of these women were indebted for recovery from dangerous wounds.
Among the women of savage races to much greater extent than among the
men, a knowledge of the healing powers of plants and herbs is to this day
found. But while for many hundred years the knowledge of medicine, and
its practice among the poorer classes was almost entirely in the hands of
women and many discoveries in science are due to them, yet an
acquaintance of herbs soothing to pain, or healing in their qualities, was
then looked upon as having been acquired through diabolical agency. Even
those persons cured through the instrumentality of some woman, were
ready when the hour came to assert their belief in her indebtedness to the
devil for her knowledge. Not only were the common people themselves
ignorant of all science, but their brains were filled with superstitious fears,
and the belief that knowledge had been first introduced to the world through
woman’s obedience to the devil. In the fourteenth century the church
decreed that any woman who healed others without having duly studied,
was a witch and should suffer death; yet in that same century, 1527, at
Basle, Paracelsus threw all his medical works, including those of

Hippocrates and Galen into the fire, saying that he knew nothing except
what he had learned from witches.[37] As late as 1736, the persecution of
her male compeers cast Elizabeth Blackwell, an English woman physician,
into prison for debt. Devoting herself even behind the bars to her loved
science, she prepared the first medical botany given to the world. The
modern discovery of anaesthetics by means of whose use human suffering
can be so greatly ameliorated, is justly claimed as the greatest boon that
science has conferred upon mankind, yet it must not be forgotten that this
medical art of mitigating pain, is but an olden one re-discovered. Methods
of causing insensibility to pain were known to the ancient world. During the
middle ages these secrets were only understood by the persecuted women
doctors of that period, subjected under church rule to torture, burning at the
stake or drowning as witches. The use of pain-destroying medicaments by
women, can be traced back from five hundred to a thousand years. At the
time that witchcraft became the great ogre against which the church
expended all its terrific powers, women doctors employed anaesthetics to
mitigate the pains and perils of motherhood,[38] throwing the sufferer into a
deep sleep when the child entered the world. They made use of Solanae,
especially Belladonna. But that woman should find relief at this hour of
intense suffering and peril when a new being entered the world, provoked
open hostility from the church. The use of mitigating herbs assailed that
theory of the church which having placed the creation of sin upon woman,
still further inculcated the doctrine that she must undergo continual
penance, the greatest suffering being a punishment in nowise equal to her
deserts. Its teachings that she had therefore been especially cursed by her
Maker with suffering and sorrow at this period, rendered the use of
mitigating remedies during childbirth, dangerous alike to the “wise woman”
and the mother for whose relief they were employed[39]. Although the
present century has shown similar opposition by the church to the use of
anaesthetics for women at this time, it is almost impossible to depict the
sentiment against such relief which made the witchcraft period one of
especial terror to womankind—an age that looked upon the slightest
attempt at such alleviation as proof of collusion with the devil. So strong
was the power of the church, so universal the belief in the guilt of all
women, that even those sufferers who had availed themselves of the
knowledge of the “wise woman” did so in fear as calling in the aid of evil,
and were ready to testify against her to whom they had been indebted for

alleviation of pain, whenever required by the dread mandate of the church.
A strong natural bias toward the study of medicine, together with deepest
sympathy for suffering humanity, were required in order to sustain the
“wise woman” amid the perils constantly surrounding her; many such
women losing their lives as witches simply because of their superior
medical and surgical knowledge. Death by torture was the method of the
church for the repression of woman’s intellect, knowledge being held as
evil and dangerous in her hands. Ignorance was regarded as an especial
virtue in woman, and fear held her in this condition. Few women dared be
wise, after thousands of their sex had gone to death by drowning or burning
because of their knowledge. The superior learning of witches was
recognized in the widely extended belief of their ability to work miracles.
The witch was in reality the profoundest thinker, the most advanced
scientist of those ages. The persecution which for ages waged against
witches was in reality an attack upon science at the hands of the church. As
knowledge has ever been power, the church feared its use in woman’s
hands, and leveled its deadliest blows at her. Although the church in its
myth of the fall attributes knowledge to woman’s having eaten of its tree,
yet while not scrupling to make use of the results of her disobedience for its
own benefit, it has been most earnest in its endeavors to prevent her from
like use. No less today than during the darkest period of its history, is the
church the great opponent of woman’s education, every advance step for
her having found the church antagonistic.
Every kind of self-interest was brought into play in these accusations of
witchcraft against women physicians: greed, malice, envy, hatred, fear, the
desire of clearing one’s self from suspicion, all became motives. Male
physicians not skillful enough to cure disease would deliberately swear that
there could be but one reason for their failure—the use of witchcraft against
them. As the charge of witchcraft not only brought disrepute but death upon
the “wise woman” at the hands of the church, she was soon compelled to
abandon both the practice of medicine and surgery, and for many hundred
years but few women doctors were to be found in christian countries. It is,
however, a noticeable fact that Madam La Chapelle, an eminent woman
accoucher of France, during the present century, and M. Chaussure revived
the use of Belladonna[40] during parturition, thus acknowledging the
scientific acquirements of serf women and “witches.” Since the re-entrance

of woman into the medical profession within the past few years, the world
has been indebted for a knowledge of the cause and cure of certain forms of
disease peculiar to woman, to the skill of those physicians of her own sex
whom the church so long banished from practice.
Through its opposition to the use of anaesthetics by the women physicians
of the witch period, the church again interposed the weight of her mighty
arm to crush science, leaving the load of preventable suffering of all kinds
upon the world for many hundred years longer, or until the light of a
scientific civilization threw discredit upon her authority. History proves that
women were the earliest chemists. The witch period also shows us the
germs of a medical system, the Homeopathic, supposed to be of modern
origin, in similia similibus curantur. Among the strange epidemics of these
ages, a dancing mania appeared; Belladonna among whose effects is the
desire of dancing, was employed as a cure of the “Dancing Mania,” and
thus the theory of Hahnemann was forestalled. During the witch period
these sages or wise-women were believed to be endowed with a
supernatural or magical power of curing diseases. They were also regarded
as prophets to whom the secrets of the future were known. The women of
ancient Germany, of Gaul and among the Celts were especially famous for
their healing powers,[41] possessing knowledge by which wounds and
diseases that baffled the most expert male physicians were cured. The
women of a still more ancient period, the fame of whose magical powers
has descended to the present time, Circe, Medea and Thracia, were
evidently physicians of the highest skill. The secret of compounding herbs
and drugs left by Circe to her descendants, gave them power over the most
poisonous serpents. Chief among the many herbs, plants and roots whose
virtues were discovered by Medea, that of Aconite stands pre-eminent. The
Thracian nation took its name from the famous Thracia whose medical skill
and knowledge of herbs was so great that the country deemed it an honor to
thus perpetuate her name.
Aside from women of superior intelligence who were almost invariably
accused of witchcraft, the old, the insane, the bed-ridden, the idiotic,[42] also
fell under condemnation. The first investigation by Rev. Cotton Mather in
America resulted in the hanging of a half-witted Quaker woman. Later still,
an Indian woman, an insane man, and another woman who was bed-ridden
were also accused. Under the present theories regarding human rights, it

seems scarcely possible that less than two hundred years ago such practices
were not only common in England, but had also been brought into America
by the Puritan Fathers. The humiliation and tortures of women increased in
proportion to the spread of christianity,[43] and the broader area over which
man’s sole authority in church and state was disseminated. As the supreme
extent of spiritual wrong grew out of the bondage of the church over free
thought, so the extreme of physical wrong rose from the growth of the
inquisitional or paternal spirit, which assumed that one human being
possessed divine authority over another human being. Paternalism, a
species of condensed patriarchism, runs through ecclesiastical, civil, and
common law. Down to the time of the American revolution, individuality
was an uncomprehended word; many hundred crimes were punishable by
death. That of pressing to death, peine-fort-et-dure, the strong and hard
pain, was practiced upon both men and women in England for five hundred
years and brought by the pilgrims to New England. The culprit was placed
in the dark lower room of some prison, naked, upon the bare ground
without clothing or rushes underneath or to cover him. The legs and arms
were extended toward the four corners of the room and as great a weight
placed upon the body as could be supported.
“The first day he (or she) is to have three morsels of barley bread; upon the
second day three draughts of water standing next to the door of the prison,
without bread, and this to be his (or her) diet till he (or she) die.”
It is computed from historical records that nine millions of persons were put
to death for witchcraft after 1484, or during a period of three hundred years,
and this estimate does not include the vast number who were sacrificed in
the preceding centuries upon the same accusation. The greater number of
this incredible multitude were women. Under catholicism, those condemned
as sorcerers and witches, as “heretics,” were in reality the most advanced
thinkers of the christian ages. Under that protestant pope, the Eighth Henry,
an Act of Parliament condemning witchcraft as felony was confirmed.
Enacted under Henry V, it had fallen into disuse, but numerous petitions
setting forth that witches and sorcerers were “wonderful many,” and his
majesty’s subjects persecuted to death by their devices, led to its re-
enactment. The methods used to extort confession without which it was
impossible in many cases to convict for witchcraft, led to the grossest
outrages upon woman. Searching the body of the suspected witch for the

marks of Satan, and the practice of shaving the whole body before applying
torture were occasions of atrocious indignities. It was asserted that all who
consorted with devils had some secret mark about them, in some hidden
place of their bodies; as the inside of the lip, the hair of the eyebrows, inside
of the thigh, the hollow of the arm or still more private parts, from whence
Satan drew nourishment. This originated a class of men known as “Witch
Prickers” who divesting the supposed witch, whether maid, matron, or
child, of all clothing minutely examined all parts of her body for the devil’s
sign. Woe to the woman possessing a mole or other blemish upon her
person; it was immediately pointed to as Satan’s seal and as undeniable
proof of having sold herself to the devil. Belief in this sign existed among
the most educated persons. Albertus Pictus, an advocate in the Parliament of
Paris, declared he himself had seen a woman with the devil’s mark on her
shoulders, carried off the next day by the devil. Many authors affirmed the
trustworthiness of witch-marks. It was supposed that upon touching the
place the witch would be unable to speak. If under the torture of having
every portion of her body punctured by a sharp instrument, the victim
became no longer able to cry out, her silence was an accepted proof of
finding the witch-mark and her condemnation was equally certain. So great
was the number of accused, that these men found profitable employment.
The depth of iniquity to which greed of money leads was never more
forcibly shown than during witchcraft. One Kincaid, a New England Witch
Pricker, after stripping his victims of all clothing, bound them hand and
foot, then thrust pins into every part of their bodies until exhausted and
rendered speechless by the torture, they were unable to scream, when he
would triumphantly proclaim that he had found the witch mark. Another
confessed on the gallows, to which a just fate finally condemned him, that
he had illegally caused the death of one hundred and twenty women whom
he had thus tortured. No means were considered too severe in order to
secure conviction. The Jesuit, Del Rio, said torture could scarcely be
properly administered without more or less dislocation of the joints, and
persons escaping conviction were frequently crippled for life.[44] The
church declared the female sex had always been most concerned in the
crime of christian witchcraft and as it was its aim to separate woman from
all connection with its ordinances, it also asserted that the priestesses of
antiquity held their high places by means of witchcraft.

Trials for witchcraft filled the coffers of the church, as whenever conviction
took place, the property of the witch and her family was confiscated to that
body. The clergy fattened upon the torture and burning of women. Books
giving directions for the punishment to be inflicted upon them bore the
significant titles of Scourge, Hammer, Ant Hills, Floggings, etc. During the
middle ages the devil was a personal being to the church with power about
equal to that of God, his kingdom maintaining its equilibrium with the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost of Heaven, by means of three persons in Hell;
Lucifer, Beelzebub and Leviathan. In this era of christian devil-worship the
three in hell equipoised the three in the Godhead. Marriage with devils was
one of the most ordinary accusations in witch trials. Such connections were
sometimes regarded with pride; the celebrated marshall de Bassompierre
boasting that the founder of his family was engendered from communion
with a spirit. It was reported of the mother of Luther that she was familiar
with an Incubus. During this period many nuns and married women
confessed to having been visited by Incubi of whose visits no spiritual
efforts could rid them. Church history also proves that young girls and boys,
many under ten years of age were tried for intercourse with such spirits.
Those infesting men were known as Succubi. Lady Frances Howard,
daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, obtained a divorce from her husband
because of his connection with a Succubus.
One of the most notable things connected with such accusation was the
frequent confession of its truthfulness. In 1459, a great number of witches
and wizards were burned,[45] who publicly confessed to their use of
unguents, to their dances, feasts, and their consort with devils. A Vicar
General[46] among the Laodunenses, at his death left confession of his
witch-rides, his copulation with devils, etc. Nor is the present age free from
similar confessions. Tales of marriage with spirits; of dead lovers paying
nightly visits to the living betrothed—of Incubi consorting with willing or
unwilling victims;—all those mediaeval statements regarding the
intercourse of spirits of the dead with the living, all the customs of
witchcraft and sorcery are paralleled in our midst to-day; and such
statements do not come from the ignorant and superstitious, but are made
by persons of intelligence as within their own personal experience. During
the witchcraft period familiarity of this nature with Incubi or Succubi was
punished with death. Occasionally a person was found of sufficient

saintliness to exorcise them as Elementals are said to have been exorcised
during the last half of the present century.[47] Devils were said to be very
fond of women with beautiful hair and the direction of St. Paul in regard to
woman’s keeping her head covered, was not always regarded as a sign of
inferiority, but sometimes believed to be a precautionary admonition
intended for the safety of christian women.[48] To this day the people of
some eastern countries, men and women alike, will not expose the head
uncovered, because of the danger of thus giving entrance to certain invisible
beings of an injurious character; the Persians in particular, wearing a turban
or cloth of peculiar appearance called Mathoomba. Confessions of magical
and witchcraft practices were by no means rare even among the highest
church dignitaries who implicated themselves by such avowals. It was
customary to attribute the practice of magic to the most holy fathers of the
church. The popes from Sylvester II to Gregory VII were all believed to
have been magicians. Benedict IX was also thus accused. The difference
between the practices of men and of women existed only in name. What
was termed magic, among men, was called witchcraft in woman. The one
was rarely, the other invariably, punished.
The practice of magic by the holy fathers was in furtherance of private or
ecclesiastical advancement and therefore legitimate in the eye of the church.
Yet, death-bed repentance was by no means infrequent. Of Pope Sylvester,
it is said, that convinced of his sinfulness in having practiced magic, upon
his death-bed he ordered his tongue to be torn out and his hands cut off
because he had sacrificed to the devil; having learned the art when Bishop
of Rheims. The significant question as to whether magnetism or hypnotism
was not a custom of the church during the middle ages, as part of the
“magic” practiced by illustrious ecclesiastical dignitaries, is one of
importance in view of recent hypnotic experiments. The fact that by means
of “suggestion” the responsibility for crime and the perpetration of overt
criminal acts, can be made to fall upon persons entirely innocent of criminal
intention, who, at the time are in a condition of irresponsibility, while the
actual felon, the person who incited the act remains unknown and
unsuspected, exceeds in malign power all that christendom has taught
regarding the evil one. Science trembles on the verge of important
discoveries which may open the door for a full understanding of mediaeval
witchcraft. The Scotch woman who asked if a person could not be a witch

without knowing it, had intuitive perception that by the action of one person
upon another, consequences could be induced of which the perpetrator was
entirely guiltless.[49] Doubtless the strange power which certain persons are
capable of wielding over others, at present calling the attention of scientific
investigators, was very common during the witchcraft period. Of this power
the church as self-constituted guardian of the esoteric sciences was fully
aware, frequently making it the method through which envy, greed and
revenge, satisfied themselves while throwing the external appearance of
guilt upon others. The most complete protection against such powers,—a
strong will,—it has ever been the aim of the church to destroy. Freedom of
the will has ever held place in clerical denunciation by side of “original
sin,” and punished as sorcery.[50]
A reminiscence of olden magic—far older than the witchcraft period is
found in the Masonic lamentation over the “lost word.” This “lost word,”
the “supreme word,” by whose use all things can be subdued, is still the
quest of a certain portion of the world; and sorcerers are still mentioned,
who cannot die until a certain mysterious word is passed from “mouth to
ear.” One of the latest occult societies extant, its membership widely
extended, claims its origin from a mysterious word similarly passed. The
Lord’s Prayer demands the making whole (hallowed), of the Father’s name,
evidently in the esoteric sense referring to that loss which dwells in the
minds of men through tradition, a species of unwritten history. With the
restoration of the feminine in all its attributes to its rightful place
everywhere, in realms seen and unseen, the lost power will have been
restored, the “lost name” have been found. Numbers are closely connected
with names, their early knowledge not only having preceded letters, but
having been of much greater value, although after a time, letters and
numbers became interchangeable. Certain persons devoted to the
consideration of occult subjects therefore claim the lost power to abide in a
number rather than in a word; sounds possessing great and peculiar
influence in all magical formulas, their power largely depending upon
inflection and tone or vibration; color and light are also called in aid during
magical formulas.[51]
The three most distinguishing features of the history of witchcraft were its
use for the enrichment of the church; for the advancement of political

schemes; and for the gratification of private malice. Among these the most
influential reason was the emolument it brought to the church. Although
inquisitors and the clergy were the principal prosecutors, this period gave
opportunity for the gratification of private malice, and persons imbued with
secret enmity towards others, or who coveted their property, found ready
occasion for the indulgence of that malice of covetousness; while the
church always claimed one-half, it divided the remainder of the accused’s
possessions between the judge and the prosecutor. Under these
circumstances accusation and conviction became convertible terms. The
pretense under which the church confiscated to itself all property of the
accused was in line with its other sophistical teaching. It declared that the
taint of witchcraft hung to all that had belonged to the condemned, whose
friends were not safe with such property in their possession. To make this
claim more effective, it was also asserted that the very fact of one member
of a family having fallen into the practice of this sin was virtual proof that
all were likewise attainted. Under this allegation of the church, a protest
against such robbery was held as proof of the witchcraft in the person so
protesting. For the purpose of getting the property of the accused admission
of the crime was strenuously pressed. In some countries the property was
not forfeited unless such confession took place. Persecution for witchcraft
was if possible more violent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries than
at any previous date. By this period it had been introduced into America
through the instrumentality of the Puritan Fathers. It was no less wide-
spread in Calvinistic Scotland, while it re-appeared with renewed vigor in
Catholic countries. In the State of Venice it caused open rebellion against
church authority, the Council forbidding the sentence of the Inquisition to
be carried out.[52]
While only Venice in the whole of Europe defied the church upon this point,
emphatically protesting against such robbery of her citizens, she ultimately
succeeded in establishing a treaty with the pope whereby the inheritance of
the condemned was retained in the family. The rebellion of Venice against
the church upon the question of property belonging to its subjects, a
question upon which the state held itself pre-eminent, soon effected a
radical change and had remarkable effect in lessening the number of
accusations in that state.[53] Theft by the church in that direction, no longer

possible, accusations of witchcraft soon ceased; being no longer recognized
as sin, after ceasing to bring money into the coffers of the church.
It is a fact noted by very many authorities that when witchcraft fell under
control of the state, its penalties were greatly lessened while accusations
grew fewer. Yet for a period, even the civil power aided in spreading this
belief, offering rewards for conviction; and as the church had grown
immensely rich by means of witch persecution, so the state increased its
own power and wealth through similar means. The theory of Bishop Butler
that whole communities at times become mad, seems proven by the
experience of this period. Upon no other ground but that of universal
insanity can excusable explanation be offered. But for the church no such
exculpation is possible, her teachings and her acts having created this
wholesale madness of communities. Experience of her course during
preceding centuries shows us that the persecution of the witchcraft period
was but a continuation of her policy from the moment of her existence—
that of universal dominion over the lives, the property, and the thoughts of
mankind. Neither rank, nor learning, age, nor goodness freed a woman from
accusation.[54] The mother of the great astronomer, Kepler, a woman of
noble family, died in chains having been accused of witchcraft.[55] The
council of Bourges tortured a reputed witch who was only known for her
good works. A determined effort for the destruction of every virtue among
women seemed made at this period. In the middle of the XIII century, the
Emperor Theodore Lascarius caused a noble lady of his court to be entirely
stripped of her clothing, and placed thus nude in a sack with cats, but even
this torture failed to extort a confession from her innocent lips. Even in
America, women of the purest lives, all of whose years had been given to
good works, met with death from like accusation.
Soon after the confirmation of celibacy as a dogma of the church, at the
time when the persecution for witchcraft so rapidly increased, which was
also the period of the greatest oppression under feudalism—a peculiar and
silent rebellion against both church and state took place among the
peasantry of Europe, who assembled in the seclusion of night and the forest,
their only place of safety in which to speak of their wrongs. Freedom for the
peasant was found only at night. Known as “Birds of the Night,” “Foxes,”
“Birds of Prey,” it was only at night assemblages that they enjoyed the least
happiness or freedom. Here with wives and daughters, they met to talk over

the gross outrages perpetrated upon them. Out of their foul wrongs grew the
sacrifice of the “Black Mass” with women as officiating priestess, in which
the rites of the church were travestied in solemn mockery, and defiance cast
at that heaven which permitted the priest and the lord alike to trample upon
all the sacred rights of womanhood, in the name of religion and law. During
this mocking service a true sacrifice of wheat was offered to the “Spirit of
the Earth” who made wheat to grow, and loosened birds bore aloft to the
“God of Freedom” the sighs and prayers of the serfs asking that their
descendants might be free. We can but regard this sacrifice as the most
acceptable offering made in that day of moral degradation; a sacrifice and a
prayer more holy than all the ceremonials of the church. This service where
woman by virtue of her greater despair acted both as altar and priest,
opened with the following address and prayer. “I will come before Thine
altar, but save me, O, Lord, from the faithless and violent man!” (from the
priest and the baron).[56] From these assemblages known as “Sabbat” or
“the Sabbath” from the old Pagan mid-summer-day sacrifice to “Bacchus
Sabiesa” rose the belief in the “Witches Sabbath,” which for several
hundred years formed a source of accusation against women, sending tens
of thousands to most horrible deaths. The thirteenth century was about the
central period of this rebellion of the serfs against God and the church when
they drank each other’s blood as a sacrament, while secretly speaking of
their oppression.[57] The officiating priestess was usually about thirty years
old, having experienced all the wrongs that woman suffered under church
and state. She was entitled “The Elder” yet in defiance of that God to whom
the serfs under church teaching ascribed all their wrongs, she was also
called “The Devil’s bride.” This period was especially that of woman’s
rebellion against the existing order of religion and government in both
church and state. While man was connected with her in these ceremonies as
father, husband, brother, yet all accounts show that to woman as the most
deeply wronged, was accorded all authority. Without her, no man was
admitted to this celebration, which took place in the seclusion of the forest
and under the utmost secrecy. Offerings were made to the latest dead and
the most newly born of the district, and defiance hurled against that God to
whose injustice the church had taught woman that all her wrongs were due.
Women’s knowledge of herbs was made use of in a preparation of Solanae
which mixed with mead, beer, cider, or farcy—the strong drink of the west

—disposed the oppressed serfs to joyous dancing and partial forgetfulness
of their wrongs during these popular night gatherings of the Sabbath.[58] It
became “the comforter” throwing the friendly mantle of partial oblivion
over the mental suffering of “him who had been so wronged” as it had done
for the mother’s physical pain. “The Sabbath” was evidently the secret
protest of men and women whom church and state in combination had
utterly oppressed and degraded. For centuries there seemed no hope for this
class of humanity—for this degraded portion of christendom—yet, even
then women held position of superiority in these night assemblages. Among
the “Papers of the Bastile,” a more extended account of woman officiating
as her own altar, is to be found.[59]
The injustice of man towards woman under the laws of both Church and
State engrafted upon society, have resulted in many evils unsuspected by
the world, which if known would strike it with amazement and terror. Even
Louis Lingg, one of the condemned Chicago anarchists, young, handsome,
of vigorous intellect, who uncomplainingly accepted for himself that death
he had decreed to the representatives to law; even he, who neither asked
mercy nor accepted the death decreed him, was the outgrowth of woman’s
wrongs. His mother with whom his fate was thrown, a woman of the people
in Hungary, belonging to a powerless class crushed for centuries, the
plaything of those above them;—his father, a representative of the
aristocracy descended from a long line of military ancestors, leaving him, as
the church had taught him, to the sole care of the mother he had betrayed, it
was impossible for this boy not to find in his breast a turmoil of conflicting
emotions, but above all, ruling all, a hatred of entrenched oppression; nor
did his father’s military blood fail to play its part, leading to the final result
which affrighted a city and closed his young life.
In looking at the history of witchcraft we see three striking points for
consideration:
First: That women were chiefly accused.
Second: That men believing in woman’s inherent wickedness, and
understanding neither the mental nor the physical peculiarities of her being,
ascribed all her idiosyncrasies to witchcraft.

Third: That the clergy inculcated the idea that woman was in league with
the devil, and that strong intellect, remarkable beauty, or unusual sickness
were in themselves proof of this league.
Catholics and protestants yet agree in holding women as the chief accessory
of the devil.[60]
The belief in witches indeed seemed intensified after the reformation.
Luther said: “I would have no compassion for a witch, I would burn them
all.” He looked upon those who were afflicted with blindness, lameness, or
idiocy from birth,[61] as possessed of demons and there is record of his
attempt to drown an afflicted child in whom he declared no soul existed, its
body being animated by the devil alone. But a magistrate more enlightened
or more humane than the great reformer, interfered to save the child’s life.
Were Luther on earth again today with the sentiments of his lifetime, he
would regard the whole community as mad. Asylums for the blind, the
dumb and idiots, curative treatment for cripples and all persons naturally
deformed, would be to him a direct intervention with the ways of
providence. The belief of this great reformer proves the folly of considering
a man wise, because he is pious. Religion and humanity were as far apart
with him after the reformation as while he was yet a monk. The fruits of
monasticism continued their effects, and his latter life showed slight
intellectual or spiritual advancement. As late as 1768 John Wesley declared
the giving up of witchcraft to be in effect giving up the Bible. Such was his
low estimate of woman that he regarded his own wife as too sinful to
conduct family prayers, although to Susannah, equally with John, is
Methodism indebted for its existence. In Great Britain, the rapid increase of
belief in witchcraft after the reformation was especially noticeable. The act
of Parliament which declared witchcraft to be felony, confirmed under
Henry VIII, was again confirmed under Elizabeth. In England the
reformation brought with it great increase of tyranny both civil and
ecclesiastical. Under Henry VIII many new treasons were created. This king
who sent the largest proportion of his six wives to the headsman’s block,
who neither hesitated at incest or at casting the taint of illegitimacy upon
the daughter who succeeded him upon the throne, could not be expected to
show justice or mercy to subject women. The penal laws of even celibate
Elizabeth were largely the result of the change in religion of the realm.[62]

The queen, absolute in Church as in State, who “bent priest and prelate to
her fiery will,” caused the laws to bear with equal severity upon protestant
and catholic. Under her “A Statute of Uniformity for Abolishing Diversity
of Opinions,” was enacted, and the clergy were continued in the enjoyment
of secular power. Women received no favor. The restrictions of the catholic
church in regard to the residence of a priest’s mother or sister in his house
were now extended to the laity. No man was permitted to give his widowed
mother or orphan sister a home in his house without permission from the
authorities, and then but for a limited time. Single women were allowed no
control over their own actions. Twelve years was the legal marriageable age
for a girl, after which period if still unmarried she could be bound out at the
option of the court.[63] Nor did the Cromwellian period lessen woman’s
persecution. The number of witches executed under the Presbyterian
domination of the Long Parliament according to a list[64] that has been
preserved, amounted to between three and four thousand persons. The legal
profession no less than the clerical asserted its belief in witchcraft, referring
to the Bible in confirmation. Blackstone said:

To deny the possibility, nay the actual existence of witchcraft and
sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of God, in
various passages of the Old and New Testament and the thing itself is a
truth to which every nation in the world hath in its turn borne testimony,
either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibiting laws.
The protestant clergy equally with the catholic priesthood, were charged
with fostering a belief in witchcraft for the purpose of gain. At no period of
the world has a more diabolical system of robbery existed. For the sake of a
few pounds or pence, the most helpless of human beings, made helpless
through church teaching as to their unworthiness, were by the church daily
brought under accusation, exposing them to a cruel death at the hand of
irresponsible tyranny. The system of thuggery in India, shines white by side
of this christian system of robbery, inaugurated by the church and sustained
by the state. In the name of religion, the worst crimes against humanity
have ever been perpetrated. On the accession of James I he ordered the
learned work of Reginald Scott against witchcraft, to be burned.[65] This
was in accordance with the act of Parliament 1605-9 which ratified a belief
in witchcraft in the three kingdoms. At this date the tragedy of Macbeth
appeared, deeply tinged with the belief of the times. A few persons
maintaining possession of their senses, recognized the fact that fear,
apprehension and melancholy gave birth to the wildest self-delusions;
medical experience recording many instances of this character. In an age
when ignorance and superstition prevailed among the people at large, while
vice, ignorance, and cupidity were in equal force among those in power, the
strangest beliefs became prevalent.
Sir George Mackenzie, the eminent king’s advocate of Scotland, conducting
many trials for witchcraft, became convinced it was largely a subject of fear
and delusion. He said:
Those poor persons who are ordinarily accused of this crime are poor
ignorant creatures, and ofttimes women who understood not the nature
of what they are accused of, and many mistake their own fears and
apprehensions for witchcraft, of which I shall give you two instances;
one of a poor man, who after he had confessed witchcraft being asked
how he saw the devil, he answered “like flies dancing about a candle.”

Another of a woman who asked sincerely; when accused, “if a woman
might be a witch and not know it?” And it is dangerous then. Those who
of all others are the most simple should be tried for a crime which of all
others is the most mysterious. Those poor creatures when defamed
became so confused with fear and the close prison in which they were
kept, and so starved for want of meals and sleep (either of which wants
is enough to destroy the strongest reason), when men are confounded
with fear and apprehension they will imagine things very ridiculous and
absurd. Melancholy often makes men imagine they are horses. Most of
these poor creatures are tortured by their keepers who are persuaded
they do God good service. Most of all that were taken were tortured in
this manner and this usage was the ground of their complaints.
To such an extent was this persecution carried even in protestant Scotland
that accused women sometimes admitted their guilt that they might die and
thus escape from a world where even if cleared, they would ever after be
looked upon with suspicion. Sir George Mackenzie visiting some women
who had confessed, one of them told him “under secrecie” that:
She had not confessed because she was guilty but being a poor creature
who wrought for her meat and being defined for a witch, she knew she
would starve, for no person thereafter would give her either meat or
lodging, and that all men would beat her and hound dogs at her and
therefore she desired to be out of the world, whereupon she wept
bitterly and upon her knees called upon God to witness what she said.
Even under all the evidence of the persecution and cruel tortures that
innocent women endured during the witchcraft period, no effort of the
imagination can portray the sufferings of an accused woman. The death this
poor woman chose, in voluntarily admitting a crime of which she was
innocent, rather than to accept a chance of life with the name of “witch”
clinging to her, was one of the most painful of which we can conceive,
although in the diversity of torture inflicted upon the witch it is scarcely
possible to say which one was the least agonizing. In no country has the
devil ever been more fully regarded as a real personage, ever on the watch
for souls, than in Christian Scotland. Sir George says:

Another told me she was afraid the devil would challenge a right to her
soul as the minister said when he desired her to confess; and therefore
she desired to die.[66]
The following is an account of the material used and the expenses attending
the execution of two witches in Scotland.
For 10 loads of coal to burn the witches £3 06.8
“ A tar barrell 0 14.0
“ towes 0 06.0
“ hurdles to be jumps for them 3 10.0
“ making of them 0 08.0
“ one to go to Tinmouth for the lord to sit upon the assize as judge 0 06.0
“ the executioner for his pains 8 14.0
“ his expenses there 0 16.4
What was the special office of the executioner does not appear; whether to
drag the victims upon hurdles, to the places of burning, to light the fire, to
keep it well blazing, is not mentioned although his office was important and
a well paid one; eight pounds and fourteen shillings above his expenses,
sixteen shillings and four pence more; in all nine pounds, ten shillings and
four pence, a sum equal to one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars of
the present day. At these rates it was easy to find men for the purpose
desired. It is worthy of note that under the frequency of torture the payment
lessened. Strange experiences sometimes befell those who were tortured: a
cataleptic or hypnotic state coming on amid their most cruel sufferings
causing an entire insensibility to pain. To the church this condition was sure
evidence of help from Satan and caused a renewal of torture as soon as
sensibility returned.
In the year 1639 a poor widow called Lucken, who was accused of
being a witch and sentenced to the rack at Helmstadt having been
cruelly tortured by the screw, was seized with convulsions, spoke high
German and a strange language and then fell asleep on the rack and
appeared to be dead. The circumstance related to the juricounsul at
Helmstadt she was ordered to be again submitted to the torture. Then
protesting she was a good Christian while the executioner stretched her
on the rack, whipt her with rods and sprinkled her with burning

brimstone, she fell again fast asleep and could not by any means be
awakened.[67]
Boiling heretics and malefactors alive, commonly in oil but occasionally in
water, was practiced throughout Europe until a comparatively late period. In
fact as a civil punishment in England it dates only to 1531 under Henry VII.
The “Chronicle of the Gray Friars” mentioned a man let down by a chain
into a kettle of hot water until dead. We have expense items of this form of
torture, in the boiling of Friar Stone of Canterbury.
Paid two men that sat by the kettle and boiled him 1s
To three men that carried his quarters to the gate and set them up 1s
For a woman that scoured the kettle 2d
Boiling was a form of torture frequently used for women. The official
records of Paris show the price paid for torture in France was larger than in
England; boiling in oil in the former country costing forty eight francs as
against one shilling in the latter. It must be remembered these official prices
for torture, are not taken from the records of China or Persia, two thousand
years ago, nor from among the savages of Patagonia, Australia or Guinea,
but two European countries of highest Christian civilization within the last
three hundred years.
The following list of prices for dealing with criminals is taken from the
official records in Paris:
For boiling a criminal in oil, francs 48
For tearing a living man in four quarters with horses 30
Execution with the sword 20
Breaking on the wheel 10
Mounting the head on a pole 10
Quartering a man 36
Hanging a man 29
Burying a man 2
Impaling a man alive 14
Burning a witch alive 28
Flaying a man alive 28

Drowning an infanticide in a sack 24
Throwing a suicide’s body among the offal 20
Putting to the torture 4
For applying the thumb-screw 2
For applying the boot 4
Torture by fire 10
Putting a man in the pillory 2
Whipping a man 4
Branding with a red-hot iron 10
Cutting off the tongue, the ears and the nose 10
Burning a witch, probably because of its greater frequency, cost but little
over one-half as much as boiling in oil. The battle of gladiators with wild
beasts in the Coliseum at Rome in reign of Nero, had in it an element of
hope. Not the priesthood but the populace were the arbiters of the
gladiator’s destiny, giving always a chance for life in cases of great personal
bravery. But in France and England the ecclesiastical code was so closely
united with the civil as to be one with it; compassion equally with justice
was forgotten, despair taking their place. Implements of torture were of
frequent invention, the thought of the age turning in the direction of human
suffering, new methods were continually devised. Many of these
instruments are now on exhibition in foreign museums. One called “The
Spider” a diabolical iron machine with curved claws, for tearing out a
woman’s breasts was shown in the United States but a few years since. In
Protestant Calvinistic Scotland, where hatred of “popery” was most
pronounced, the persecution of witches raged with the greatest violence,
and multitudes of women died shrieking to heaven for that mercy denied
them by Christian men upon earth. It was in Scotland after the reformation
that the most atrocious tortures for the witch were invented, one of the most
diabolical being known as “the Witches’ Bridle.” By means of a loop passed
about the head, this instrument of four iron prongs was fastened in the
mouth. One of the prongs pressed down the tongue, one touched the palate,
the other two doing their barbarous work upon the inner side of the cheeks.
As this instrument prevented speech thus allowing no complaint upon the
part of the victim, it was preferred to many other methods of torture.[68] The
woman upon whom it was used was suspended against a wall by a loop at

the back, barely touching the floor with her toes. The iron band around her
neck rendered her powerless to move, she was unable to speak or scarcely
to breathe. Every muscle was strained in order to sustain herself and prevent
entire suffocation, the least movement causing cruel wounds by means of
the prongs in her mouth.
The victims were mostly aged women who having reared a family,
spending their youth and beauty in this self-denying work, had lived until
time threading their hair with silver had also robbed cheek and lip of their
rosy hue, dimmed the brilliancy of the eye and left wrinkles in place of
youthful dimples. Such victims were left for hours, until the malignity of
their persecutors was satisfied, or until death after long torture released
them from a world where under the laws of both Church and State they
found their sex to be a crime. Old women for no other reason than that they
were old, were held to be the most susceptible to the assaults of the devil,
and the persons most especially endowed with supernatural powers for evil.
Blackstone refers to this persecution of aged women in his reference to a
statute of the Eight Henry.[69] We discover a reason for this intense hatred of
old women in the fact that woman has chiefly been looked upon from a
sensual view by christian men, the church teaching that she was created
solely for man’s sensual use. Thus when by reason of declining years she no
longer attracted the sensual admiration of man, he regarded her as having
forfeited all right to life. England’s most learned judge, Sir Mathew Hale,
declared his belief in the agency of the devil in producing diseases through
the aid of old women. The prosecution against this class raged with unusual
violence in Scotland under the covenanters.
To deny the existence of especially evil supernatural powers, in old women,
was held as an evidence of skepticism exposing the doubting person to like
suspicion. Great numbers of women were put to death at a time; so common
indeed was the sight as to cause but little comment. A Scotch traveler
casually mentioned having seen nine women burning together at Bath in
1664. Knox himself suffered a woman to be burned at St. Andrews whom
one word from him would have saved. Father Tanner speaks of “the
multitude” of witches who were daily brought under the torture that was
constantly practiced by the church.

The reformers were more cruel than those from whose superstitious
teachings they professed to have escaped. All the tortures of the old church
were repeated and an unusual number of new and diabolical ones invented
to induce confession. Nor were these tortures applied to the suspected witch
alone; her young and tender children against whom no accusation had been
brought, were sometimes tortured in her presence in order to wring
confession from the mother. Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a
woman accused of witchcraft endured the most intense torture, constantly
asserting her innocence. Failing to secure confession, her husband, her son,
and finally her young daughter of seven short years were tortured in her
presence, the latter being subjected to a species of thumb-screw called “the
pinniwinkies” which brought blood from under the finger nails with a pain
terribly severe. When these were applied to the baby hands, to spare her
innocent child, the mother confessed herself a witch; but after enduring all
the agonies of torture upon herself and all she was made to suffer in the
persons of her innocent family, confession having been obtained through
this diabolical means, she was still condemned to the flames, undergoing
death at the stake a blazing torch of fire, and died calling upon God for that
mercy she could not find at the hands of Christian men.[70] In protestant
Scotland as in catholic countries, witchcraft was under control of the clergy.
When a woman fell under suspicion of being a witch, the minister
denounced her from the pulpit, forbade any one to harbor or shelter her and
exhorted his parishioners to give evidence against her.[71] She was under
ban similar to the excommunicate of the catholic church, a being outside of
human help or sympathy. In protestant as in catholic countries the woman
accused was virtually dead. She was excommunicated from humanity;
designated and denounced as one whom all must shun, to whom no one
must give food or lodging or speech or shelter; life was not worth the living.
To afford such a one aid was to hazard accusation as a confederate. The first
complaint was made to the clergy and Kirk Sessions.[72]
Notwithstanding two hundred years of such experience, when by an act of
parliament in 1784, the burning and hanging of witches was abolished, the
General Assembly of the Calvinistic church of Scotland “confessed” this act
“as a great national sin.” Not only were the courts and the church alert for
the detection of alleged witches, but the populace persecuted many to death.
[73]
Deserted by her friends, the suspected witch was beaten, worried by

dogs, denied food and prevented from sleeping.[74] Contrary to equity and
the principles of modern law, the church sought in every way to entrap
victims into giving evidence against themselves. Once a person was
accused, no effort was spared to induce confession. Holding control over
the soul as well as the body, enquiry into these crimes was pushed by every
method that human ingenuity could devise. The kirk became the stronghold
of superstition; both rewards and punishments were used as inducements
towards ferreting out witches. All ties of natural affection were ignored, the
kirk preaching it to be a matter of greater duty to inform against one’s
nearest relatives than against strangers. Unlike the theory of Roman civil
law which held the accused innocent until proven guilty, ecclesiastical law
everywhere produced a condition under which the accused was held guilty
from the moment of accusation. During the witchcraft period the minds of
people were trained in a single direction. The chief lesson of the church that
betrayal of friends was necessary to one’s own salvation, created an intense
selfishness. All humanitarian feeling was lost in the effort to secure heaven
at the expense of others, even those most closely bound by ties of nature
and affection. Mercy, tenderness, compassion were all obliterated.
Truthfulness escaped from the Christian world; fear, sorrow and cruelty
reigned pre-eminent. All regard that existed for others grew up outside of
church teaching and was shown at the hazard of life. Contempt and hatred
of woman was inculcated with greater intensity; love of power and
treachery were parts of the selfish lessons of the church. All reverence for
length of years was lost. The sorrows and sufferings of a long life appealed
to no sympathetic cord in the heart. Instead of the tenderness and care due
to aged women, they were so frequently accused of witchcraft that for years
it was an unusual thing for an old woman in the north of Europe to die in
her bed. Besides the thousands of accused who committed suicide in order
to escape the horrors incident upon trial, many others tired of life amid so
much humiliation and suffering, falsely accused themselves, preferring a
death by the torture of fire to a life of endless isolation and persecution. An
English woman on her way to the stake, with a greatness of soul born of
despair, freed her judges from responsibility, by saying to the people, “Do
not blame my judges. I wished to put an end to my own self. My parents
keep aloof from me; my own husband has denied me. I could not live on
without disgrace. I longed for death and so I told a lie.” The most eminent
legal minds became incompetent to form correct judgment. Having received

the church as of divine origin, and its priesthood as the representatives of
the divinity, they were no longer capable of justice. Old and ignorant
women upon the most frivolous testimony of young children were
condemned to death. One of the most notable examples of the power of
superstitious belief to darken the understanding, is that of Sir Matthew
Hale, living in the seventeenth century. He was spoken of by his
contemporaries as one of the most eminent jurists of the world, whose
integrity, learning and knowledge of law were scarcely to be paralleled in
any age, and yet he became so entirely convinced of the diabolism of two
women as to condemn them to death while sitting at Bury St. Edmunds,
without even summing up the evidence. The learned and famous Sir
Thomas Browne, who was present, coincided in the justice of this decision,
although but a short time previously he had published a work against
superstition. The testimony upon which these women were condemned was
of the most petty and worthless character, yet among all the persons present
at the trial, but one or two seemed inclined to doubt the sufficiency of the
evidence.
The records of this remarkable trial were preserved to the world by a
gentleman who privately took a report for his own use, which was
published in pamphlet form a number of years afterwards. This extremely
rare book is not to be found even in the Congressional Library at
Washington, but the Supreme Court Library owns a copy from which this
report is taken:
Trial March 10, 1664 by Sir Matthew Hale, Knight, Lord Chief Baron
of his Majesty’s Court of Exchequer held before a judge who for his
integrity, learning and wisdom hardly any age before or since could
parallel; he not only took a great deal of pains and spent much time in
this trial himself, but had the assistance and opinion of several other
very eminent and learned persons; so that this was the most perfect
narrative of anything of this nature hitherto extant.
The persons tried were Ann Durant, or Drury, Susan Chandler,
Elizabeth Pacy. The celebrated Dr. Brown of Norwich who had written
a work against witchcraft, was present and after hearing the evidence
expressed himself as clearly of the opinion the persons were bewitched,
and said in Denmark lately there had been a great discovery of witches

who used the same way of afflicting persons by the agency of pins. This
trial took place in the sixteenth year of Charles II. The witnesses were
two children of eleven and nine years who fell into fits, vomiting pins
and nails. Sargeant Keeling asserted deception on part of the witnesses.
The Court appointed Lord Cornwallis, Sir Edmund Bacon and Sargeant
Keeling as committee to examine the girl alone, when they became fully
satisfied of her imposture but without convincing the learned judge who
contrary to all justice and law did not sum up the evidence, but gave the
great weight of his opinion in favor of their guilt saying: “That there are
such creatures as witches, I have not doubt at all. For First, Scripture
has offered so much. Second, the wisdom of all nations has propounded
laws against such persons, which is an argument of their confidence of
such a crime. And such has been the judgment of this kingdom as
appears by that Act of Parliament which hath provided punishments
proportionate to the guilt of this offense, and desired them strictly to
observe the evidence; and desired the great God of Heaven to direct
their hearts in the weighty things they had so heard. For to condemn the
innocent and to let the guilty go free, were both an abomination to the
Lord. Within half an hour the jury returned a verdict of guilty on
thirteen counts. The judge and all the court were fully satisfied with the
verdict and therefore gave judgment against the witches that they should
be hanged.
The evidence was of the most paltry character; as when out of door a
little thing like a bee flew upon the witness face, putting a ten penny
nail with a broad head into her mouth. Lath nails and pins said to have
been vomited by the children were produced in court. When arraigned
the accused pleaded not guilty nor did they ever change this plea. Great
pressure was upon them to induce confession, but they could not be
prevailed upon to thus criminate themselves and were executed the
seventeenth of March, just one week after trial, confessing nothing.
This trial is the more remarkable that confessions usually deemed the
best of evidence, were not obtained, these poor illiterate, persecuted
women braving all the learning of the great judge and power of the
kingdom in maintaining to the last the assertion of their innocence. The
minutes of this trial were taken by a gentleman in attendance upon the
court and were not published until 1716 when the record fell into the

hands of a person who saw its value “so that,” he says, “being the most
complete minutes of anything of this nature hitherto extant, made me
unwilling to deprive the world of it; which is the sole motive that
induced me to publish it.”
Not alone the clergy and the legal fraternity wrought in unison, but the
medical as well, gave the weight of their authority in favor of witchcraft;
and many persons needing the wisest medical appliance for their relief from
disease were executed as witches. Half-witted and insane persons met with
the same persecution as old women. It was an era of the strong against the
weak, the powerful against the helpless. Even Sir Thomas Browne, himself
a physician, regarded the fainting fits to which one of the accused women
had long been subject as fuller evidence of her guilt. In his character of
medical examiner he asserted that the devil had taken opportunity of her
natural fits, to operate with her malice.
An almost equally notable trial as that of Bury St. Edmunds before Sir
Matthew Hale, was known as the Sommers Trial, or that of the “Lancashire
Witches,” in 1612. Among the accused were two extremely aged women
decrepit and nearly blind, tottering into second childhood, incapable of
understanding whereof they were accused, or the evidence against them
which, as in the case argued before Sir Matthew Hale, was of the most
worthless character. One needs but refer to the records in order to learn the
extreme age, ignorance and many infirmities of these women. But as was
the case in Scotland, these weaknesses were used as evidences of guilt. The
feeble mental and physical condition of “the Lancashire witches,” their
great age and failing power were used as evidence for their condemnation.
From published accounts of this trial, we learn that:
This Annie Whittle, alias Chattox, was a very old withered and decrepit
creature, her sight almost gone, a dangerous witch of very long
continuance, her lips ever chattering and walking (talking)? but no one
knew what. She was next in order to that wicked, fierce bird of
mischief, old Demdike.
This poor old creature “confessed” that Robert Nutter had offered insult to
her married daughter; and the court decreed this was a fair proof of her
having bewitched him to his death. No condemnation of the man who had

thus insulted her daughter, but death for the aged mother who had resented
this insult. Designated as “Old Demdike, a fierce bird of mischief” this
woman of four score years of age, had not only brought up a large family of
her own, but her grand children had fallen to her care. She had lived a
blameless life of over eighty years, much of it devoted to the care of
children and children’s children. But when decrepit and almost blind she
fell under suspicion of a crime held by Church and State as of the most
baleful character, her blameless and industrious life proved of no avail
against this accusation. She seems to have originally been a woman of great
force of character and executive ability, but frightened at an accusation she
could not understand and overpowered by all the dread majesty of the law
into whose merciless power she had fallen, she “confessed” to communion
with a demon spirit which appeared to her in the form of a brown dog.[75]
From a work entitled The Sommers Trials, the form of indictment is
learned.[76]

INDICTMENT.

This Annie Whittle, alias Chattox, of the Forest of Pendle, in the countie
of Lancaster, widow, being indicted for that she feloniously had
practiced, used and exercised divers wicked and divelish artes, called
witchcraftes, inchantments, charms and sorceries, in and upon one
Robert Nutter of Greenhead, in the Forest of Pendle, in the countie of
Lanc; and by force of the same witchcraft, feloniously the sayed Robert
Nutter had killed, contra pacem, etc. Being at the barre was arraigned.
To this indictment, upon her arraignment, she pleaded, not guiltie; and
for the tryall of her life put herself upon God and her country.

One of the chief witnesses at this trial was a child of nine years.[77] Upon
seeing her own daughter arraigned against her, the mother broke into
shrieks and lamentations pleading with the girl not to falsify the truth and
thus condemn her own mother to death. The judges instead of seeing in this
agony a proof of the mother’s innocence looked upon it as an attempt to
thwart the ends of justice by demoniac influence, and the child having
declared that she could not confess in her mother’s presence, the latter was
removed from the room, and as under the Inquisition, the testimony was

given in the absence of the accused. The child then said that her mother had
been a witch for three or four years, the devil appearing in the form of a
brown dog, Bill. These trials taking place in protestant England, two
hundred years after the reformation, prove the worthless nature of
witchcraft testimony, as well as the superstition, ignorance and entire
unfitness for the bench of those men called the highest judicial minds in
England. The church having almost entirely destroyed freedom of will and
the expression of individual thought, men came to look upon authority and
right as synonymous. Works bearing the stamp of the legal fraternity soon
appeared. In 1618 a volume entitled, “The County Justice,” by Michael
Dalton, Gentleman of Lincoln Inn, was published in London, its chief
object to give directions, based upon this trial, for the discovery of witches.
Now against these witches the justice of the peace may not always
expect direct evidence, seeing all their works are works of darkness and
no witness permitted with them to accuse them, and therefore for their
better discovery I thought good here to set down certain observations
out of the methods of discovery of the witches that were arraigned at
Lancaster, A.D. 1612 before Sir James Altham and Sir Edward Bromley,
judges of Assize there.
1. They have ordinarily a familiar or spirit which appeareth to them.
2. The said familiar hath some bigg or place upon their body where he
sucketh them.
3. They have often pictures of clay or wax (like a man, etc.) found in
their house.
4. If the dead body bleed upon the witches touching it.
5. The testimony of the person hurt upon his death.
6. The examination and confession of the children or servants of the
witch.
7. Their own voluntary confession which exceeds all other evidence.

At this period many persons either in hope of a reward[78] or because they
believed they were thus aiding the cause of justice, kept private notebooks

of instruction in the examination of witches, and new varieties were
constantly discovered. When witchcraft by Act of Parliament was decreed
felony this statute gave the legal fraternity double authority for a belief in
its existence. Even Sir George Mackenzie although convinced by his own
experience that many persons were wrongfully accused of witchcraft, still
declared that its existence could not be doubted, “seeing that our law
ordains it to be punished with death.” The most fatal record the world
possesses of the plague is that of the fourteenth century, known as the
“Black Death,” when whole villages were depopulated and more than half
the inhabitants of Europe were destroyed. It will aid in forming our
judgment as to the extent of woman’s persecution for witchcraft, to
remember it has been estimated that the number of deaths from this cause
equalled those of the plague.
The American Colonies adopted all the unjust previsions of European
christianity as parts of their own religion and government. Fleeing from
persecution, the Puritans yet brought with them the spirit of persecution in
the belief of woman’s inferiority and wickedness, as taught by the church
from whence they had fled. The “Ducking Stool” for women who too
vigorously protested against their wrongs, and the “Scarlet Letter” of shame
for the woman who had transgressed the moral law, her companion in sin
going free, or as in England, sitting as juror in the box, or judge upon the
bench. With them also came a belief in witchcraft, which soon caused
Massachusetts Colony to enact a law ordering suspected women to be
stripped naked, their bodies to be carefully examined by a male “witch
pricker” to see if there was not the devil’s mark upon them. The public
whipping of half naked women at the cart’s tail for the crime of religious
free thought soon followed, a union of both religious and judicial
punishment; together with banishment of women from the Colony for
daring to preach Christ as they understood his doctrines. These customs
more barbarous than those of the savages whose home they had invaded,
were the pleasing welcome given to the pioneer woman settlers of America
by the husbands and fathers, judges and ministers of that period, with which
the words “Plymouth Rock,” “May Flower” and “Pilgrim Fathers” are so
intimately associated. The same persecution of aged women took place in
New England as in old England, while children of even more tender years
were used as witnesses against their mothers if accused of witchcraft, or

were themselves imprisoned upon like suspicion. The village of Salem,
Massachusetts, is indissolubly connected with witchcraft, for there the
persecution raged most fiercely, involving its best women in ruin. One of
the oldest buildings still extant in the United States is “The Witch House” of
that place, erected in 1631, although it was sixty one years later before this
persecution reached its height.
A terrible summer for Salem village and its vicinity was that of 1692—a
year of worse than pestilence or famine. Bridget Bishop was hanged in
June; Sarah Good, Sarah Wilder, Elizabeth Howe, Susanna Martin and
Rebecca Nurse in July; George Burroughs, John Proctor, George
Jacobs, John Willard and Martha Carrier in August; Martha Corey,
Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmit Reed,
Samuel Wordwell, and Mary Baker in September; in which last month
Giles Corey eighty-one years of age, was pressed to death under a board
loaded with heavy stones, not heavy enough however to crush out life
until a day or two of lingering torture had intervened. Sarah Good’s
daughter Dorcas between three and four years old, orphaned by her
mother’s execution, was one of a number of children who with several
hundred other persons were imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft;
many of these sufferers remained in a wretched condition, often heavily
ironed for months, some upwards of a year; and several dying during
this time. A child of seven, Sarah Carrier, was called upon to testify as
witness against her mother.
Some of the condemned, especially Rebecca Nurse, Martha Corey, and
Mary Easty, were aged women who had led unblemished lives and were
conspicuous for their prudence, their charities and all domestic virtues.
[79]

So extended became the persecution for witchcraft that the king was at last
aroused to the necessity of putting a stop to such wholesale massacre of his
subjects, issued a mandate forbidding the putting of any more persons to
death on account of witchcraft.[80] A remarkable family gathering took
place at Salem, July 18, 1883, of two hundred persons who met to celebrate
their descent from Mrs. Rebecca Nurse, who was executed as a witch at that
place in 1692. The character and life of Mrs. Nurse were unimpeachable.
She was a woman seventy years of age, the mother of eight children, a

church member of unsullied reputation and devout habit; but all these
considerations did not prevent her accusation, trial, conviction and death,
although she solemnly asserted her innocence to the last. A reprieve granted
by the governor was withdrawn through the influence of the church, and she
was hung by the neck till she was dead. In order to give her body burial, her
sons were obliged to steal it away by night, depositing it in a secret place
known but to the family. Forty persons at the hazard of their own lives
testified to the goodness and piety of Mrs. Nurse. Their names were
inscribed upon the monument erected by her descendants, in 1892, to her
memory.[81] The Rev. Cotton Mather and the Rev. Samuel Parrish are
indissolubly connected with this period, as both were extremely active in
fomenting a belief in witchcraft. Richard Baxter, known as the “greatest of
the Puritans” condemned those who expressed a disbelief in witchcraft as
“wicked Sadducees.” Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, was
one of the most bitter persecutors of witches in New England. The
dangerous spirit of a religious autocracy like the priesthood, was forcibly
shown by a paper read by Rev. Dr. George E. Ellis, a few years since,
before the Massachusetts Historical Society, in which he excused the act of
stripping women naked in order to search for a witch mark, upon the
ground of its being a judicial one by commissioned officers and universally
practiced in christendom.
Boston as “The Bloody Town” rivalled Salem in its persecution of women
who dared express thoughts upon religious matters in contradiction to the
Puritanic belief; women were whipped because of independent religious
belief, New England showing itself as strenuous for “conformity” of
religious opinion as Old England under Queen Elizabeth. The cruelties of
this method of punishing free thought, culminated in the Vagabond Law of
Massachusetts Colony, passed May 1661.
The first ecclesiastical convocation in America was a synod especially
conveyed to sit in judgment upon the religious views of Mistress Anne
Hutchinson, who demanded that the same rights of individual judgment
upon religious questions should be accorded to woman which the
reformation had already secured to man. Of the eighty-two errors canvassed
by the synod, twenty nine were charged to Mistress Hutchinson, and
retraction of them was ordered by the church. The State united with the
Church in opposition to Mistress Hutchinson, and the first real struggle for

woman’s religious liberty, (not yet at an end), began upon this side of the
Atlantic. The principal charge brought against Mistress Hutchinson was that
she had presumed to instruct men. Possessed of a fine intellect and strong
religious fervor, she had inaugurated private meetings for the instruction of
her own sex; from sixty to a hundred women regularly gathering at her
house to hear her criticism upon the Sunday sermon and Thursday lectures.
These meetings proved so interesting that men were soon found also in
attendance and for these reasons she was arbitrarily tried in November
1637, before the Massachusetts General Court upon a joint charge of
sedition and heresy. In May of the same year a change had taken place in
the civil government of the colony. Sir Henry Vane, who like herself,
believed in the supreme authority of the in-dwelling spirit, having been
superseded by John Winthrop as governor, the latter sustaining the power of
the clergy and himself taking part against her. Two days were spent by him
and prominent clergymen in her examination, resulting in a sentence of
imprisonment and banishment from the colony for having “traduced the
ministers” and taught men against the direct authority of the Apostle Paul,
who declared “I suffer not a woman to teach.”
Thus the old world restrictions upon woman, and their persecutions, were
soon duplicated in the new world. Liberty of opinion became as serious a
crime in America as in England, and here as in Europe, the most saintly
virtue and the purest life among women were not proof against priestly
attack. While Mistress Hutchinson was the first woman thus to suffer, many
others were also persecuted. When Mary Fisher and Anne Austin, two
Quaker women who had become famous for their promulgation of this
heretical doctrine in many parts of the world, arrived in Boston harbor, July
1656, they were not at first permitted to land, but were ultimately
transferred to the Boston jail, where they were closely confined, and
notwithstanding the heat of the weather their one window was boarded up.
Their persons were also stripped and examined for signs of witchcraft, but
fortunately not a mole or a spot could be found. Boston—“The Bloody
Town”—was the center of this persecuting spirit and every species of
wanton cruelty upon woman was enacted. Stripped nude to the waist they
were tied to a whipping-post on the south side of King Street and flogged
on account of their religious opinions; but it was upon the famous
“Common” that for the crime of free speech, a half nude woman with a new

born babe at her breast was thus publicly whipped; and it was upon the
“Common” that Mary Dyer, another Quaker woman, was hung in 1659.
Both she and Anne Hutchinson prophesied calamity to the colony for its
unjust course, which was fulfilled, when in 1684, it lost its charter in
punishment for its intolerance. No Christian country offered a refuge for
woman, as did Canada the colored slave. But the evils of woman’s
persecution by the church, did not end with the wrongs inflicted upon her;
they were widely extended, affecting the most common interests of the
world. While famines were unknown among the ancient Romans in the first
period of their history, yet Christendom was early and frequently afflicted
with them. While the operations of nature were sometimes the cause, the
majority of famines were the result of persecutions, or of christian wars,
especially the crusades which took such immense numbers of men from the
duties of agriculture at home, making them a prey upon the scanty resources
of the countries through which these hordes passed. As was seen in the Irish
famine of 1847-8 and at the present moment as result of a scanty food
supply in Russia, pestilence of various kinds followed famine years. But the
crusades in which the church attempted to wrest the holy sepulchre from
Turkish hands, were scarcely more productive of famines than its
persecuting periods when mankind lost hope in themselves and the future.
Our own country has shown the effect of fear and persecution upon both
business and religion, as during the witchcraft period of New England,
scarcely two hundred years since, all business of whatever nature in country
and in town was neglected, and even the meeting house was allowed to fall
out of repair. Nor was this ruin of a temporary nature, as many people left
the Colony and its effects descended to those yet unborn. Both Bancroft’s
History of the United States, and Lapham’s History of the Salem
Witchcraft, paint vivid pictures of the effects following the different church
persecutions of woman. Of the Hutchinson trial, Bancroft says:
This dispute infused its spirit into everything. It interfered with the levy
of troops for the Pequot war; it influenced the respect shown to
magistrates; the distribution of town lots; the assessment of rates and at
last the continued existence of the two parties was considered
inconsistent with public peace.
Of the witchcraft period, Upham says:

It cast its shadows over a broad surface and they darkened the condition
of generations.... The fields were neglected; fences, roads, barns, even
the meeting house went into disrepair.... A scarcity of provisions nearly
amounting to a famine continued for some time. Farms were brought
under mortgage, or sacrificed, and large numbers of people were
dispersed. The worst results were not confined to the village but spread
more or less over the country.
Massachusetts was not the only colony that treated witchcraft as a crime.
Maryland, New Jersey and Virginia possessed similar enactments.
Witchcraft was considered and treated as a capital offense by the laws of
both Pennsylvania and New York, trials taking place in both colonies not
long before the Salem tragedy. The peaceful Quaker, William Penn,
presided upon the bench in Pennsylvania at the trial of two Swedish women
accused of witchcraft. The Grand Jury acting under instruction given in his
charge, found true bills against these women, and Penn’s skirts were only
saved from the guilt of their blood by some technical irregularity in the
indictment.
Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Massachusetts and New York, eight of the thirteen colonies recognized
witchcraft as a capital crime. Margaret M. was indicted for witchcraft in
Pennsylvania in 1683, the law against it continuing in force until September
23, 1794. By law of the Province of East New Jersey, 1668, any person
found to be a witch, either male or female, was to suffer death. In that state
the right of complaining against a child who should smite or curse either
parent, pertained to both father and mother; the penalty was death. As late
as 1756, Connecticut recognized the right of parents to dispose of children
in marriage. In Maryland 1666 the commission given to magistrates for
Somerset county directed them under oath to make enquiries in regard to
witchcraft, sorcery, and magic arts. In 1706 Grace Sherwood of Princess
Anne County, Virginia, was tried for witchcraft. The records of the trial
show that the court after a consideration of the charges, ordered the sheriff
to take the said Grace into his custody and to commit her body to the
common jail, there to secure her with irons or otherwise, until brought to
trial.[82]

In 1692, the Grand Jury brought a bill against Mary Osgood of the Province
of Massachusetts Bay, as follows:
The powers for our sovereign lord and lady, the king and queen, present
that Mary Osgood, wife of Captain John Osgood in the county of Essex,
about eleven years ago in the town of Andover aforesaid, wickedly,
maliciously and feloniously a covenant with the devil did make and
signed the devil’s book, and took the devil to be her God, and consented
to serve and worship him and was baptized by the devil and renounced
her former Christian baptism and promised to the devil both body and
soul, forever, and to serve him; by which diabolical covenant by her
made with the devil; she, the said Mary Osgood is become a detestable
witch against the peace of our sovereign lord and lady, the king and
queen, their crown and dignity and the laws in that case made and
provided. A true bill.[83]
When for “witches” we read “women,” we gain fuller comprehension of the
cruelties inflicted by the church upon this portion of humanity. Friends were
encouraged to cast accusation upon their nearest and dearest, rewards being
offered for conviction. Husbands who had ceased to care for their wives or
who by reason of their sickness or for any cause found them a burden, or
for reasons of any nature desired to break the indissoluble bonds of the
church, now found an easy method. They had but to accuse the wife of
witchcraft and the marriage was dissolved by her death at the stake. Church
history is not silent upon such instances, and mention is made of a husband
who by a rope about the neck dragged his wife before that Arch Inquisitor,
Sprenger, making accusation of witchcraft against her. No less from
protestant than from catholic pulpits were people exhorted to bring the
witch, even if of one’s own family, to justice.
In 1736, the statute against witchcraft was repealed by the English
Parliament, yet a belief in witchcraft is still largely prevalent even among
educated people. Dr. F. G. Lee the vicar of an English church, that of All
Saints in Lambeth, a few years since publicly deprecated the abolition of its
penalties in a work entitled “Glimpses of the Twilight,” complaining that
the laws against witchcraft had been “foolishly and short-sightedly
repealed.” A remarkable case occurred in Prussia 1883 when the father of a
bed-ridden girl, having become persuaded that his daughter was bewitched

by a woman who had occasionally given her apples and pears, was advised
the child would be cured if she drank some of the blood of the supposed
witch. The woman was therefore entrapped into a place where some of the
chief men of the commune had assembled to receive her. She was seized,
one of her fingers pricked with a needle and her blood given to the sick
child. In 1885 a case of slander based upon alleged witchcraft came before
Justice Randolphs, District Court of Jersey City. The justice listened to the
evidence for several hours before recalling the fact that there was no law
upon which he could base his decision, the latest legislation being the law
of 1668 repealed 1795 (twenty years after our Declaration of
Independence), the crime was no longer officially recognized.[84] It is
curious to note the close parallel between accusations during the witchcraft
period and those against the New Jersey suspect of 1885. It was said of her
that during the night she accomplished such feats by supernatural power as
jumping from a third story window, alighting upon a gate post as gently as a
falling feather. It was also asserted that people whom she was known to
dislike became gradually ill, wasting away until they died. The accused
woman declared it was her superior knowledge that was feared, and thus
again the middle ages are paralleled, as the witches of that period were
usually women of superior knowledge. In 1882, a Wisconsin farmer was put
under bonds to keep the peace, on account of his attempts to assault an old
lady who he averred was a witch, who injured his cattle, and entered his
house through the chimney or key hole, to his great terror and distress. The
state of Indiana about sixty years ago possessed a neighborhood where the
people believed in witchcraft. If the butter failed to come, or the eggs to
hatch, or a calf got choked, or even if the rail fences fell down when
covered with sleet and snow, the whole trouble was attributed to the
witches, who were also believed to have the remarkable power of saddling
and bridling a man and with sharp spurs riding him over the worst roads
imaginable, to his great harm and fatigue. Even the great Empire State, as
late as January 1892, had within its borders a case of murder where an
inoffensive old man lost his life because he was believed to be a wizard;
and this occurred in the center of a prosperous farming country where
money is liberally expended for educational purposes, this being one of the
rare instances where a man fell under suspicion.

It is but a few years since the great and enlightened city of Paris caused the
arrest, under police authority, of fourteen women upon charge of sorcery;
and it is but little more than twenty years since a woman in the state of
Puebla, Mexico, was hung and burned as a witch, because unable to reveal
the whereabouts of a lost animal. She was seized, hung to a tree, shot at and
then plunged into fire until she expired.[85] The body at first buried in the
cemetery, was exhumed the following day by order of the priest, who
refused to allow the remains of a witch to be buried in consecrated ground.
The state, in person of the mayor of the city, authorized the proceedings by
taking part in them as principal persecutor. In the same province another
woman was severely flogged as a witch, by four men, one of them her own
son. Thus now, as in its earlier ages, wherever the light of civilization has
not overcome the darkness of the church, we find woman still a sufferer
from that ignorance and superstition which under Christianity, teaches that
she brought sin into the world.

Chapter Six

Wives

Under Roman law before Christianity had gained control of the empire, a
form of marriage existed known as “Usus,” which secured much freedom to
wives. It was entered into without the terrifying religious ceremonies which
made “Confarreatio,” practically indissoluble and the wife the veritable
slave of the husband, who held power even over her life. Neither did it
possess the civil formality of “Coemptio” under which the bride purchased
entrance into the marriage duties and her husband’s household by the
payment of three pieces of copper.[1] “Coemptio” like “Confarreatio” gave
the husband entire power over the person and property of the wife, while
“Usus,” a form of simple consent left the wife practically free, keeping her
own name and property. The real origin of this form of marriage is not fully
known. Maine declared it to be as old as or even older than the Twelve
Tables, under which woman possessed the right to repudiation in marriage.
These laws, a compilation of still older ones, were afterwards incorporated
into statutes by a woman of Athens, and were received by the Romans as
extremely pure natural laws.[2] Plato refers to an early Athens entirely ruled
by women, its laws of pre-eminently just character. Tradition, whose basis
is half forgotten, half remembered history, attributes the origin of Athens to
the ancient Atlantians. The former existence of this submerged continent is
daily becoming more fully recognized. The explorations of the
“Challenger,” the “Dolphin,” the “Gazelle,” and the discoveries of Le
Plongeon in Yucatan, at later date, confirming olden tradition. Maine thus
ascribes a much older origin to “Usus” than Gibbon, who attributes it to the
effect of the Punic triumphs.[3] In reality “Usus” seems to have been a
reminiscence of the Matriarchate, incorporated into the law of the Twelve
Tables, and accepted by Rome as a more just form of the marriage relation
for women than the religious “Confarraetio” or the civil form of
“Coemptio.” But as Rome increased in wealth and luxurious modes of
living, the influence of the Patriarchate correspondingly extended, the

perception of justice at the same time diminishing. Pomp and ceremony
were associated with the marriage rite among patricians, while “Usus” was
regarded as a plebeian form especially suited to the populace. But at later
date when Rome rebelling against the tyranny of her rulers, tended towards
a republican form of government, “Usus” again became general. It was
impossible for patrician women not to see the greater freedom of plebeian
wives under “Usus,” a form that while equally binding in the essentials of
the union did not make the wife a marital slave,[4] and “Usus” eventually
became the basis of Roman legal conception of marriage, against which
Christianity from the first waged a warfare of ever increasing fierceness,[5]
the very foundation of that religion being the subordination of woman in
every relation of life. Under “Usus” the mere fact of two persons living
together as husband and wife was regarded as a marriage. If during each
year the wife remained away from the home for three days, she kept herself
from under her husband’s power. She remained a part of her father’s family;
her husband could not mortgage or in any way alienate her property. This
was absolutely contrary to the laws of the christian form of marriage, under
which the wife surrendered her person, her property, and her conscience,
into the indisputable control of the husband. Under “Usus” a large
proportion of Roman property fell into woman’s hands. She became the real
estate holder of the Eternal City and its provinces, and in consequence was
treated with great respect; the holding of property, especially of real estate
conducing to that end. Under “Usus” the cruelties sanctioned by
“Confarraetio” were rendered impossible; a wife could no longer be put to
death, as was formerly the custom, for having tasted wine, a treacherous
kiss from her husband upon his return home, betraying her, nor could her
infant daughter be exposed or murdered at the pleasure of her husband who
as inexorable master was frequently wont to refuse her pleadings for the life
of her babe, calling her prayers naught but the scruples of a foolish woman.
[6]

Thus under “Usus” human life became more sacred, and woman endowed
with a greater sense of personal security. It affected an entire change for the
better, in the moral sentiments of the Roman empire.[7] A complete
revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This must
have been the period, says Maine, when a juriconsulist of the empire
defined marriage as a life long fellowship of all divine and human rights.

Not alone Maine, but also Reeves, failed not to see that the disruption of the
Roman Empire was very unfavorable to the personal and proprietory rights
of woman.[8] The practical effect of the common Roman form of marriage
being the absolute legal independence of the wife, under which a large
proportion of Roman property fell into the hands of women, the wife
retaining her family name and family inheritance. All this was changed as
soon as Christianity obtained the rule. Under Christian forms of marriage a
wife was taken from her own family and transferred into that of her
husband the same as a piece of property. She assumed his name, the same
as the slave took that of the new master to whom he was transferred. That
this idea of the wife as a slave did not belong alone to the earlier christian
period, but is a part of christian doctrine of today is clearly shown by the
continued custom of a woman’s dropping her family name upon marriage
and assuming that of the husband-master.
For this middle Roman period carried its blessings to wives no longer than
until the empire became christianized, when the tyranny of ecclesiastical
marriage again fell to woman’s lot. While under the influence of “Usus,”
Roman jurists of the middle period had declared the ownership of property
by married women to be a principle of equity; this drew forth opposing
legislation from the christians, and under christian law, the husband again
became master of his wife’s person, and property, her children also falling
under his entire control, the mother possessing no authority over them.
From that period down to the twentieth century of christianity, under all
changing civil laws, woman has ever felt the oppressions of ecclesiasticism
in this relation.[9]
Guizot strangely declares that woman’s present, and what he terms,
superior, position in the household today, is due to feudalism.[10] The
isolation and strife under which the nobility lived during the feudal period,
warring against each other when not engaged in foreign aggression,
compelled to certain forms of social life within each castle, thus creating the
modern family, or the family under its present social form. At that period
the feudal wife with her retinue of household serfs and a vast number of her
husband’s retainers in charge, held a more responsible position than that of
woman under primitive christian habits of life. But the knights and lords of
these feudal castles were lecherous robbers, rather than men of kindly

regard for womankind. Their inclination was not towards justice or family
life, but the despoiling of all beneath them, and even of their equals with
whom they were not upon terms of amity. The ruins of such castles, like the
nest of the eagle, perched upon some inaccessible rock, add today an
element of picturesque beauty to the Rhine and other rivers of Europe, but
owe their elevated and isolated positions of the evil character of their
owners, the banditti of the middle ages.[11] When not engaged with their
king in warfare, they made the despoiling of serfs and the betrayal of wives
and daughters their chief diversion, the robbery of burghers and travelers
their business; churchmen equally with laymen living by the same means.
During the year 1268, Rudolph of Germany, destroyed sixty-six castles of
these christian robber nobility in Thuringia alone, and hung twenty-nine of
these “family builders” at one time in Erfurt. He compared Rome to the
lion’s den in fable; the footsteps of many animals to be found going thither,
but none coming back. At this period the soldiers of Christian Europe found
pleasure in torture for its own sake, chiefly selecting women as their
victims. In mediaeval England the condition of woman was one of deep
degradation. Wives were bought and daughters sold for many hundred years
after the introduction of Christianity.[12] Although England was
christianized in the fourth century, it was not until the tenth that the
christian wife of a christian husband acquired the right of eating at table
with him, nor until the same century did a daughter gain the right of
rejecting the husband her father might have selected for her. While the sale
of daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the
introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India, a
father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the smallest
present therefor. In mediaeval England the daughter was held as a portion of
the father’s property to be sold to the highest bidder. The Mundium[13]
recognized the father’s right to sell his daughter to the husband he might
select for her, usually the highest bidder in point of wealth or political
influence. While Marquette pertained to kings, feudal lords, and men of no
family relationship to the victim, Mundium inhered in the father himself.
Through it he sacrificed his own daughter for money or power.
The practice of buying wives with cattle or money was regulated both in the
laws of King Aethelbert and King Ine. In event of the woman who had been

thus bought, becoming a widow, half of the sum paid for her seems to have
been set aside for her support, provided her husband had not died without
issue. The other half remained absolutely the property of her father, brother,
or guardian by whom she had been sold. At a somewhat later period the
church doctrine of celibacy influenced all ranks of men, while at the same
time an unmarried woman because of her maidenhood was regarded as
disreputable. A bachelor held honorable place, even though all celibate men
were looked upon as libertines of especially impure life. Warnings against
matrimony were the ordinary topics of conversation, while virtue in women
was held so little sacred that no nearness of relationship was security for
either a married or a single woman.[14] Husbands trafficked in the honor of
their wives, fathers sold their daughters,[15] yet if under temptation, a
woman fell, outside of such sale, her punishment was most severe. To a
husband was accorded the power of life and death over his household, and
either personally or by means of a hired assassin he not unfrequently
assigned his wife to death or to a punishment more atrocious and barbarous.
[16]
Disraeli says:
If in these ages of romance and romances the fair sex were scarcely
approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever “the course of
true love” altered; when the frail spirit loved too late, and should not
have loved, the punishment became more criminal than the crime, for
there was more selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of justice
when autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree.
The English christian husband of that age is paralleled by certain North
American Indians of the present day.[17] The horizon of woman’s life was
bounded by the wishes of her father or husband. Single, she was regarded as
a more or less valuable piece of property[18] for whose sale the owner was
entitled to make as good a bargain as possible. It was as a bride that the
greatest sum was secured.[19] Prominent among the laws of the first
Christian king of Kent, were provisions for the transfer of money or cattle
in exchange for the bride.[20] The theory of woman’s ownership by man was
everywhere carried into practice, and with great severity in case the wife
proved unfaithful to her enforced vows. The facts that her consent to the
marriage had not been asked, that mayhap the man she was forced to wed
was utterly repugnant to her, that her affections might already have been

bestowed, that she was transferred like a piece of goods with no voice upon
the question, were not taken into consideration, and did the husband not
choose to kill his derelict spouse, the question still remained one of
property,[21] and a new bride was demanded of the lover in place of the wife
whose love he had gained.
A husband, attracted by a new face, more wealth, greater political influence,
or for any reason desiring to be rid of his wife, was regarded as justifiable
in hiring an assassin to strangle her, or if walking by a river-brink, of
himself pushing her into the water where her cries for help were
disregarded. Those in whose hearts pity rose, were prevented from giving
aid, but such remarks as, “It is nothing, only a woman being drowned.”[22]
A horse or other domestic animal received more consideration than the
women of a household. Notwithstanding this period, the early part of the
fourteenth century, before the days of printing or rapid intercourse between
nations, yet the evil fame of christendom reached distant lands. Its
hypocrisy and baseness were known by those very Saracens from whom the
Crusaders attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre. To Sir John Mandeville,
the Sultan of Egypt mercilessly criticized the christianity of England[23] and
the christian method of serving God; the total disregard of chastity, the sale
of daughters, sisters and wives. We cannot agree with Disraeli in his doubts
if there was a single christian in all christendom at this period. To the
contrary, it may be regarded as an epoch when the doctrines of christianity
were most fully sustained, the church at that time carrying out the principles
of both the Old and the New Testament regarding women. From Moses to
Paul, the Bible everywhere speaks of her as a being made for man,
secondary to man, and under his authority by direct command of the
Almighty; the state, as coadjutor and servant of the church, basing her
codes of law[24] upon its teachings. Under these codes woman has not only
been looked upon as naturally unchaste, but also regarded as a liar, the state
demanding the testimony of two or three, and in some instances of seven
women to invalidate that of one man; the man even then in extreme cases
clearing himself by his single oath. Condemned as having brought evil into
the world, woman’s every step was looked upon with suspicion, and the
most brutal treatment as far short of her just deserts. To speak well of her
was to cause misgivings of one’s self. The system of defamation
inaugurated by the church in reference to women, was later recognized by

the Jesuits as a most effective plan for the personal subjugation of men.
Busenbaum, an influential writer of this order, directing:
Whenever you would ruin a person you must begin by spreading
calumnies to defame them. Repetition and perseverance will at length
give the consistency of probability, and the calumnies will stick to a
distant day.
The astute Jesuits learned their lesson from church treatment of women. Its
practical results were ever before their eyes in the contempt with which
woman was regarded, and her own consequent loss of self respect. Under
early and mediaeval christian law, as in most states today, the father alone
had right to the disposal of his children. He possessed the sole power of
giving away his daughter in marriage; if he died, this right devolved upon
the eldest son; only in case there were no sons was the right of the mother
in any way recognized. If neither father or brother were living, the mother
gave her daughter away in marriage, and this was the only instance in
which one woman possessed control over another woman, the law allowing
the mother no voice in the marriage of her daughter unless she was a widow
without sons. So greatly enslaved were daughters, that non-consent of the
victim in no way impaired the validity of the marriage.[25] A girl was simply
a piece of family property to be disposed of as the family thought best.
Although wives were simply the slaves of husbands, yet the condition of an
unmarried woman was even more deplorable. Deprived of the society of
young persons of her own sex, not allowed speech with any man outside of
her own family, she was fortunate if she escaped personal[26] ill-treatment in
her father’s house. Not permitted to sit in the presence of either her father or
her mother, continually found fault with, the laws constraining her to marry
while giving her no preference as to a husband, and marriage still more
fully taking from her the control of her own person, yet it was anxiously
looked forward to as at least a change of masters, and the constant hope that
in the husband she might find a lover who for dear love’s sake would treat
her with common humanity.
Such was the condition of women during eighteen hundred years of
christianity. Legislated for as slaves, imprisoned for crimes that if
committed by a man were only punished by branding the hand; buried alive
for other crimes that committed by men were atoned for by the payment of

a fine; denied a share in the government of the family or the church, their
very sex deemed a curse, the twentieth century is now about to open
showing no truly enlightened nation upon the face of the earth. From the
barbarism of inhumanity the world is slowly awakening to the fact that
every human being stands upon the plane of equal natural rights. The
Church has not taught the world this great truth, the State has not conceded
it; its acknowledgment thus far, has been due to the teachings of individual
men and women, that self-constituted authority over others a crime against
humanity. Under christian teaching regarding woman, the daughter was
looked upon as a more remote relative and heir than the son and this upon
the ground of her inferiority. Blackstone, although admitting that such
views did not pertain in Rome, yet speaks of males as “the worthier of
blood.” Such views were not held by pre-christian Britain. Under common
law, before that country accepted christianity, property was equally divided
between sisters, and only by special custom, between brothers.[27] But as
early as Henry II it was the general rule that a woman could not share an
inheritance with a man. An exception sometimes existed in a particular city
where such custom had long prevailed.
Until quite recently, English women have not been permitted to express an
opinion upon political questions, although the Primrose League and other
similar organizations have effected a great change within a few years. Yet it
is but little more than two hundred years, in 1664, at Henley-upon-Thames,
a woman having spoken against the taxation imposed by Parliament, was
condemned for this freedom of political criticism, to have her tongue nailed
to the body of a tree at the highway side upon a market day, and a paper
fastened to her back detailing the heinousness of her offense. It was thus the
state deterred similar politically-minded women from the expression of
their views, and in line with the church used its most stringent measures to
retain woman in the “sphere” to which both church and state assigned her.
Many savage tribes of Africa exhibit the same grade of civilization that was
extant in christian England from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries.
A father will sell his daughter among Unyamwazi, Africa, for one up to
ten cows. A Lomali asks of a poor wooer from ten to twenty horses, of a
wealthy one from 100 upward, together with fifty camels and 300
sheep. On the other hand, in Uganda, four oxen are sufficient to buy the

most perfectly formed village belle, provided six needles and a box of
cartridges are thrown in.
The sale is the same, the payment alone of different character. An African
girl in case of a wealthy wooer, bringing even more than was ordinarily
received during the middle ages for an English christian maiden. The
patriarchal spirit wherever cropping out exhibiting the same characteristics,
whether among Jews, Christians, or African savages. This is the more
notable as among civilized or savage races yet governed by the principles of
the Matriarchate, the position of woman is very high. In Samoa, no woman
is compelled to work, all labor of whatever character being performed by
the men. The celebrated traveler, Prof. Carl Lumholz, in his work “Among
the Cannibals,” makes some interesting statements in regard to the course
adopted by the natives of Georgia River, Australia, to save women from
giving birth to undesired children, and to prevent the needless suffering and
infant mortality so common in christian lands.
Among the methods adopted in christian countries for a continuance of the
crimes common in the marriage relation, have been more or less stringent
laws against divorce, ever falling with heaviest force upon her whom
christian marriage laws have made a slave. The “Christian Union” declares
as a significant act of evil import, that “in Wyoming, where the power of
woman in affairs of government is greatest, one divorce takes place in every
six marriages, the proportion being greater than in any other state.” But if
this assertion of the “Christian Union” is true, it is proof that a share in
making the laws which govern her is wisely used by the women of that
state; and it marks a new era in civilization, when woman holding political
power in her own hands, refuses longer to degrade herself by living in a
relation that has lost the binding power of love. The laws of church and of
state during the christian ages originated with man, and it is a promising
sign of woman’s growth in self-reliance, independent thought, and purity of
character, that she thus protests against the bondage of a relation which
virtually holds the wife as slave of the husband; for despite the changes of
the last four and a half decades, we still find the general tone of legislation
in line with the church teaching of woman’s created inferiority to man. We
still find belief in the wife’s duty of obedience to the husband; we still
discover the church, the state, the world, all regarding the exercise of her
own judgment even upon the questions most closely related to herself as

woman’s greatest sin. As free as woman is called today, she has not yet as
daughter secured perfect liberty of choice in marriage, the power of the
family too often compelling her into a hated relation. Money still leads
parents to prefer one suitor above another, even in the United States; while
in many European countries, marriages are arranged by friends, or through
a broker, entirely without the girl’s consent, who is frequently taken from a
convent or school to be thus sold to some wealthy and perhaps octogenarian
wooer, who covets the youth or beauty of the victim.[28]
The burning of twenty missionaries in a portion of savage Africa, a few
years since, filled the civilized world with horror. But for several hundred
years after the introduction of christianity into Great Britain, the penalty for
simple theft by a woman slave was burning alive, and all the other women
slaves were compelled to assist her auto-de-fe. Upon such an occasion
mentioned by Pike, eighty other women each brought a log of wood for the
burning.[29] By the old Roman Code, burning alive as a punishment was
forbidden because of its barbarity, but christianity reintroduced it, and for
long centuries after the destruction of the Roman Empire, that other land
aspiring to control of the sea, which proudly boasts that the sun never sets
on her possessions, kept it in her criminal code for the punishment of
helpless women.[30] So rigorous was woman’s slavery that the friendships
of women with each other, or with men, were strictly prohibited; yet the
deep affection of one man for another to whom he consecrated his life and
fortune, and of whom he spoke with that deep tenderness, was highly
commended.[31] The despotic, irresponsible power of husbands in christian
England at this period is shown by the diverse manner in which the murder
of a wife by a husband, or a husband by a wife, was regarded. For husband
to murder a wife either by his own hands or those of a hired assassin, was of
frequent occurrence, but as she was his slave over whom he had power of
life and death, this was looked upon as a trivial affair. But under the laws of
both church and state, the murder of a husband by a wife was regarded as
petty treason, to be punished with the utmost severity, burning alive being a
not uncommon form.[32]
Under christian legislation not alone the wife’s person but her property so
fully became her husband’s that her use of any portion of it thereafter
without his consent was regarded as theft; and such is still the law in the

majority of christian countries; it is less than sixty years since a change in
this respect took place in any part of the christian world. While a wife may
steal from her husband it is still the law that a husband cannot steal from his
wife. If she allows him to transact business for her, or in any way obtain
possession of her property even for a moment, he has acquired its legal
ownership. Since the passage of the Married Woman’s Property Act, the
courts of England have decided that a husband cannot steal from his wife
while she is living with him. A case before Baron Huddleston, 1888,
commented upon by the Pall Mall Gazette, under head of “Stealing from a
Wife,” called attention to the superior position of the mistress in respect to
property rights over that of the wife.
Can a husband rob his wife? Baron Huddleston yesterday answered this
by saying he can not rob her at all under the common law, which
regards all the wife’s property as the husband’s; and, theft is only
robbery under the Married Women’s Property Act, when the wife is
living apart from her husband, or when he is preparing to desert her. It is
really quite amazing how many advantages a mistress has over a wife in
all matters relating to property and to person. It almost seems as if the
object of the law was to inflict such disabilities on wives in order to
induce the fair sex to prefer concubinage to matrimony.
The separate moral codes for man and woman in all christian lands, show
their evil aspect in many ways. Adultery, in all christian countries is held to
be less sinful for men than for women. In England, while the husband can
easily obtain a divorce from the wife upon the ground of adultery, it is
almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce from the husband upon
the same ground. Nothing short of the husband’s bringing another woman
into the house to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in
proceedings for a separation; and even then, the husband retains a right to
all the wife’s property of which he was in possession, or which may have
fallen into his hands. Less than a dozen years since, an English husband
willed his wife’s property to his mistress and her children of whom he was
the father. The wife, (in what is known as “The Birchall Case”), contested
the will, but the courts not only decided in its favor, but added insult to that
legal robbery, by telling the wife that a part of her money was enough for
her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband’s mistress and
illegitimate children should share it with her.

Woman’s disobedience to man is regarded by both the church and the state
as disobedience to God. As late as the first half of the present century it was
held as constructive treason, in England, punishable by the state, for a wife
to refuse obedience to her husband’s commands or in any way to question
his authority. She was required to be under submission to him as the direct
representative of the deity. For the woman who protested against this
annihilation of her individuality, a flogging was the customary form of
punishment and so common was the use of the whip that its size was
regulated by law.[33] The punishment of petit treason[34] was more severe
for woman than for man because her crime was regarded as of a more
heinous character. She was dragged on the ground or pavement to the place
of execution then burned alive; a man was drawn and hanged. It was long
after the conquest before even a man convicted of treason secured the right
of being carried to execution on a sledge or hurdle. Blackstone comments
upon the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement. In
case of a woman the wounds and lacerations thus received must have
greatly added to her intensity of suffering, yet so blinded was he through
those laws, that he calls her punishment of burning, a tribute to the
“decency due to the sex.”[35]
During a portion of the christian era the wife has not been looked upon as
related to her husband. The residuum of this disbelief in the relationship of
husband and wife, occasionally shows itself to the present day.[36] She was
his slave under both religious and civil law, holding the same relations to
him as the subject did to the king, and liable to punishments similar to those
inflicted upon unruly slaves, or disloyal subjects. Rebellion against the
husband’s authority was treason punishable by law, similarly as treason to
the king. The difference was but in name. Down to the end of the eighteenth
century in England, the wife who had murdered her husband was burned
alive; if the husband murdered his wife he suffered simple decapitation,
“the same as if he had murdered any other stranger.” For the wife’s crime of
petit treason the penalty was that of the slave who had killed her master. It
is scarcely a hundred years since the punishment of burning the wife alive
for the murder of her husband, or the female slave for the murder of her
master, as petit treason, passed out of the English penal code; the last
instance occurring in 1784, eight years after our declaration of
independence. This same code was operative in the colonies; the last

woman thus punished in this country, being a slave in 1755, who had
murdered her master, America having twenty-nine years precedence in the
abolition of this penalty.[37]
A cablegram from Europe, September 1892, proves the continued existence
in this last decade of the nineteenth century of the crime of petit treason,
and also the barbarous punishment still inflicted under christian law, upon
the wife who murders her husband. This case, occurring in Finland, was
carried up to the Court of Appeals, which not only affirmed the decision of
the lower court but decreed additional punishment. Because the wife had
also forged her husband’s name for small sums of money, having under law,
first been robbed by him of her earnings, the judgment of having her right
hand cut off, was added to the original sentence. She was then decapitated,
her body fastened to a stake, covered with inflammable material and burned
to ashes. Although this wife was not burned alive, the barbarity of her
punishment was most atrocious, and took place under the christian laws of
the church and the state, in a Protestant country in the “year of our Lord,”
1892. That the punishment was infinitely more severe than would have been
inflicted upon the husband in case he had murdered his wife, was due to
christian teaching of woman’s inferiority and subordination to man; thus
making the wife’s crime that of petit treason, under law only a trifle less
heinous than murdering a king, or attempting destruction of the
government. Had the husband murdered the wife it would have been,
according to legal prevision, the same as if he had killed “any other
stranger.” The marriage ceremony robbed her of her property and earnings,
but in equity the money she was accused of stealing from him belonged to
her. Under the laws of most christian states, a woman is robbed of herself
and all of her possessions by the simple fact of her marriage. Under
christian laws the services of the wife in the marital relation are all due to
the husband,[38] her earnings all belong to him; she is a slave owning
nothing and with no rights in the property her husband calls his own. This
wife’s crime was provoked by pre-existing criminal legislation of the
christian church and state. Possessing no legal right to the control of her
own person, property or conscience, the wife was held to have sinned
against a divinely appointed master to whom she owed more than human
allegiance: she was a criminal so great that the punishment of severing her

hand and head were deemed entirely inadequate, and her body fastened to a
stake was covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes.[39]
While the external government of Finland, as declarations of war, peace,
treaties, etc., is under control of the Czar, or Grand Duke, yet in the internal
administration of affairs this country is an Independent State, under a
Constitution dating 1772, and confirmed by three successive czars. It
became christianized in the twelfth century but is not under the Greek
church; its established religion is Evangelical and Lutheran, under control
of the archbishop of Abo, and the bishops of Bogia and Knopo; an
ecclesiastical assembly meeting every ten years; and the Diet, composed of
representatives of the clergy, nobility, citizens and peasants, every five
years. Without consent of these bodies no laws are enacted or repealed; but
woman possesses no representation either in ecclesiastical or civil affairs.
The old law of marriage instituted by the church, which held the wife as
belonging body and soul to the husband who not alone possessed control
over her actions but decided her religion, is still extant. In but few countries
do we see a tendency towards its abolition, even those that have somewhat
favorably legislated upon the question, still retaining the general principle
of a wife’s subserviency to her husband. A few years since an English lady
desirous of uniting with the Catholic church was refused consent by her
husband, “a staunch churchman.” Unknown to him she was received into
that body, which proved occasion of an animated controversy between the
husband and the late Cardinal Manning, the former basing his opposition
and his letter of remonstrance to the cardinal upon the ground of the
admitted legal right of a husband, under English law, to ordain the form of
his wife’s religion.[40][a] Nor do we find material difference in the United
States. In Virginia, in the winter of 1891, a wife, despite the opposition of
her husband caused her infant to be baptized by an Episcopal clergyman
into that church, the husband openly expressing his disapproval while the
ceremony was in progress, and afterwards suing the clergyman for an
interference with his vested rights over wife and child. This supreme
authority of the husband in christian countries is shown in many strange
ways. Among the Hindoos the naming of the child belongs to the mother. If
the father expresses desire for a different name, each one is written upon a
paper over which lighted lamps are set, the one burning the longest deciding
the choice of name. But in Rhode Island as late as 1892, a controversy

between the parents as to the naming of a child was settled by law. The
father and mother each filed a certificate with the registrar; the father
employing a lawyer who to the satisfaction of the city solicitor proved his
client’s prior right, and an order was issued to the registrar in favor of the
father’s choice of name.[41] The claim of the christian husband in each of
these instances was that of his supreme and prior right, on the church theory
incorporated into law, that both wife and child belong to the husband. The
celebrated Agar-Ellis case in England during the latter part of the seventies,
was brought by a wife to compel the keeping by a husband of his pledges in
regard to the religious education of his children. The decision was against
the wife, upon the general ground that a wife had no rights in law as against
a husband. A man’s pledged word broken at the gaming table renders him
infamous and subjects him to dishonor through life. But a husband’s
pledged word broken to his wife, under ruling of the highest court and the
profoundest legal talent of England, the Court of Appeals, and the Vice-
Chancellor, is just, implying no dishonor, but rather entitling him to respect
as a man who in a befitting manner has maintained his marital rights and
authority. The judge instructed the wife that she had no right to teach her
children what her husband did not believe, even though she herself most
fully believed what she taught. He impressed upon her that she was not
rearing her children for herself, but as her husband’s property, over which
she possessed no control only in so far as the husband made her his agent.
In affirming the order of the Vice-Chancellor, the court of appeals declared
that the father had the legal right to bring up the children in his own faith,
and in pledging his word to the contrary he had in no way forfeited or
abandoned his authority. This decision of the English Court of Appeals, is in
accord with the laws of the United States. The Albany N. Y. Law Journal in
commenting upon this case under the head of “Curious Question,” declared
the decision to be in harmony with the general rule as to religious
education; the child is to be educated in the religion of the father.
The English Women’s Suffrage Journal in its comments, declared English
law to be based upon the Koran, quoting, in proof, from a writer in the
“Contemporary Review”:
The East has long been noted for the subordination of its women, and
this subjection is not only preached by Mussulmans and Buddhists but
even by Christian churches. Woman is not regarded as a person but as a

field, cultivable or not, as the possessor desires. As a field can neither
have faith, nor intellect, nor a will of its own, it would be absurd for a
man to occupy himself about what a woman believes, thinks, or wishes.
She is absolutely nothing but her husband’s domain. He cultivates it and
reaps the harvest, for the harvest belongs to the proprietor.
According to the Women’s Suffrage Journal, this condition accurately
depicted the spirit of the injunction laid upon Mrs. Agar-Ellis, by Lord
Justice James.
To the wife and mother he declared that she had no right to teach her
children what she believed, but must, to the contrary, teach them what
her husband believed, whether she believed it or not; the law not
concerning itself with what a woman believes, or wishes, as she is in
law absolutely nothing but her husband’s domain.
The mistake of the Journal lies in ascribing this law to the teachings of the
Koran, instead of the teachings of the Bible, which in general tone, and
through particular instruction, places woman upon the same level as a
man’s “flocks and herds, oxen and cattle.” We do not find the personal
rights of women in the United States differing from those of the women of
England. A famous suit was tried in Ohio, 1879, known as the “Lucy
Walker Case,” a former wife suing the present wife for alienating her
husband’s affections. Great attention was called to this suit from the high
position of the parties; Judge Seney, former husband of one, and present
husband[42] of the other wife, being widely known as author of a “Civil
Code,” bearing his name. The suit gained still greater notoriety from the
principle enunciated in his decision rendered against the plaintiff, by Judge
Dodge, before whom the case came to trial; he dismissed it upon the ground
that a wife had no rights as against her husband. All testimony upon part of
the injured first wife was excluded upon the same ground. He decided:
First: That the husband has a property interest in his wife which the wife
does not possess in the husband.
Second: That the law protects him in this right of property in her.
Third: Upon the ground that he holds her and dares the world to meddle
with him in the holding.

Fourth: But on the contrary the wife looks alone to the husband, the law
compelling her to do so.
Thus less than fifteen years since the legal decision was rendered in the
United States, that a wife is a husband’s property; that the husband has a
pecuniary interest in the wife, the law protecting his right of property in her,
while the wife possesses no reciprocal right of property in the husband.
The Toledo Bee gave the full text of Judge Dodge’s decision:
The question submitted in this: Has a wife such a property in her
husband, has she such a legal pecuniary interest in him, that she can
bring an action at law against one who injures him, against one who
imprisons him, and, finally, can a wife recover damages at law against a
woman who has carnal intercourse with her husband without her
consent? It will be at once admitted that the question is a novel one. Our
courts adjudicate primarily upon property interests. A husband has a
pecuniary, a property interest in his wife. The law protects this right of
property.
A father can recover damages against a man who seduces his daughter,
but a mother can not recover for the seduction of a daughter. Why not?
Is she not as dear to the mother as the father? Nay, dearer, by as much as
a mother’s love exceeds a father’s. But she has not property in her, is
not entitled to her wages; neither is a mother bound to support her
children. The father is the head of the family, not the mother. He, by
virtue of his headship, is legally entitled to the services of his family.
The husband is head of the wife; not the wife of the husband.
But can a husband sue his wife if she refuses to support him out of her
property, to give him her earnings, or keep her marriage contract? Not at
all. Can a father sue his minor child that refuses him obedience and
service? Not at all. And why is this? For the same reason that he cannot
sue his flocks or his herds, his oxen and his cattle—they are his. His to
command. He is responsible for and to them. He cannot sue his own. He
can sue any one who takes them away; any one who keeps or harbors
them; any one who injures them; because they are his own. But the wife
does not own her husband; the child does not own the father, and,
therefore, I hold that the child cannot sue for an injury to the father, nor

the wife for an injury to the husband. There is in her no property right
upon which to found the action. My conviction is that the wife looks to
her husband alone for the fulfillment of his marriage vows. If he refuses
her the support, protection and love which he pledged her, she applies to
a court to enforce the claim against him. Every dollar he has, every
penny of his earnings, all his arm can gain or his intellect can attain are
subject to her right. But she looks to her husband alone, the law
compels her to do so. The husband enforces his claim to his wife by
striking down every one who interferes with his right to her. He holds
her and dares the world to meddle with her. The law protects him in
holding. The law gives courage to his heart, strength to his arm in
defending his position. But the wife looks to the husband. She relies
upon his pledge and his promise, which the law will enforce, and she
looks to that alone. The law does not permit her to go forth to smite the
seducer of her husband, nor the man or woman who entices him away.
But as showing the rapid growth of public opinion in favor of the wife’s
equality of right with the husband, through the persistent rebellion of
woman against established laws and usages of Church and States, thus
forcing an advancing civilization upon the world, was a decision rendered
1891, twelve years later, in the state of Indiana. The case was that of Leah
Haynes, plaintiff, against Flora Knowles, defendant; a suit similar in
character to the “Lucy Walker Case.” Judge Elliot in Supreme Court of that
State, on appeal from the decision of the Circuit Court of Dearborn County,
reversed the finding of the lower court, deciding in favor of the right of a
wife to sue for the alienation of her husband’s affections. This decision, so
contrary to common law, and to ordinary christian legislation for woman, is
proof of an advancing civilization which does not look to the church for
approval. Court decisions of this character establishing a precedent, are of
far greater value in demonstrating the growth of a purer public sentiment,
than are simple legislative victories upon school or municipal questions.
They speak even more clearly than do the host of newly opened industries,
freer opportunities for education, married woman’s property laws and
similar legislation, of a growing recognition of woman’s personal rights,
and of a civilization founded upon the common rights of humanity, and no
longer upon church authority.

The general spirit and letter of the christian laws of husband and wife was
most fully carried out by a husband of the state of Missouri a few years
since. Mrs. Olive Davenport of St. Louis, suing for a divorce, upon the
ground that her husband required her to obey him in all things.
“Davenport’s rules for his Wife” were offered in evidence.
Rules for the Government of my Wife’s Conduct while away from me,
June 1, 1879:
First: Not to speak to any person or allow any person to speak to her on
the car except the conductor and porter in the discharge of their duty.
Second: Go directly from depot in New York, to Mrs. Haight’s house,
and occupy room with mother and sleep only in room.
Third: Speak kindly and politely to Mrs. Haight, but not in a friendly or
familiar manner. Say to her you do not wish to meet any one in the
house. Ask for a table to yourself, with only your family or go
somewhere else.
Fourth: Never sing in the parlor or sing in your room when any person
except your immediate family be present.
Fifth: Never leave mother day or night for five minutes at a time for any
reason whatsoever. Do not walk, ride, or go anywhere without her, even
with your own brother.
Sixth: Do not call on any person whatsoever, and allow no one who
may call on you to see you unless they be your brothers or their wives.
Do not speak to any person you may meet whom you have not known in
the past.
Seventh: Write every night to me a full, truthful and exact account of
everything you have done, where you have been, to whom you have
spoken, and whom you have seen. This must be done every night.
Let nothing but sickness or death prevent your keeping these rules, for I
will excuse no breach on any account.
Do not leave New York even for one hour without my permission,
except to Brooklyn or Harlem.

If my wife cannot keep these rules in word and spirit, I desire never to
see her again.
Benjamin R. Davenport.

The divorce suit showed the married pair to have been separated once
before, Mrs. Davenport, unable to bear her husband’s tyranny, returning to
her mother’s house. At that time her husband required her to eat only what
he directed, and to wear only those clothes he bade her wear, selecting even
the color of her ribbons. The only fault he had to find with her was that she
“talked back,” which has always been deemed an unpardonable crime in
woman; one for which the Ducking Stool and Scold’s Bridle were invented.
After she left him, Mr. Davenport wrote affectionate letters to his wife,
calling her the sweetest and best of women, imploring her to return. She
relented and lived with him once more, but her husband again put his rules
in force. She then sued for a divorce, which the court granted. Mr.
Davenport’s treatment of his wife is by no means exceptional. The
following excerpt is from a letter in the Terra Haute, Ind., Mail, 1884.
An individual who considers himself a representative man in the city,
and perhaps he is, said in the presence of several persons. “I went home
at three o’clock this morning and found my wife sitting up. She burst
into tears and asked me where I had been and why I treated her in that
manner? I just told her if she said another word I would leave the house;
that as long as she had a comfortable home where she could spend her
evenings it was none of her business where I spent mine. Now, if I did
not provide for my family, it would be a different thing but so long as
my wife is well provided for, she has no right to complain and I don’t
propose to allow it.” These are the man’s own words, and there are a
great many men who hold the same opinions. If their wives protest
because they drink, gamble and spend their nights away, they say, “You
have a good home and enough to eat and wear; what more do you
want?”
A lady of Richmond, Va., anxious to know from a legal source just what her
rights as a wife were, consulted a lawyer of that city.

“Well, Madam,” he replied, head thrown back, thumbs in armholes:
“Well, Madam, you have a right to comfortable food; a fire to keep you
warm, and two calico dresses a year. These are your legal rights; all
beyond these are the gifts of your husband. Luxuries of food and
clothing, journies and books, these are not yours by law; it remains with
your husband to decide whether he will furnish them to you or not.”
And this is Christian civilization for woman at the close of the nineteenth
century of this era.
Although married women of the State of New York have enjoyed certain
property rights since 1848, subsequent legislation in various ways
increasing that power, it was not until 1882, that the Court of Appeals
decided them to be the rightful owners of articles of personal adornment
and convenience coming from their husbands, possessing power to
bequeath them at death to their heirs. The same year the Supreme Court of
that state decided that a wife may sue her husband for damages for assault
and battery. The influence of these decisions in recognizing woman’s rights
of person, especially that of the Supreme Court in deciding the right of the
wife to punish the husband through the courts for brutal treatment, can
scarcely be overestimated. It opened a new era for woman:
First: A recognition of the wife’s personality.
Second: Holding the husband responsible for his treatment of the wife.
Third: An acknowledgement of the wife’s right to protection as against the
husband. It destroyed, in this state the old femme covert teaching of
Christianity, and recognized a wife as possessing the common rights of a
human being.
The United States, making pretense of the greatest governmental freedom in
the world, and in reality according it to men of every color and degree of
intelligence or property, still denies such liberty to woman. In many of the
states, the old restrictions of modern common law still prevail. There are
states where the property of the wife upon marriage falls into the control of
the husband, to do with as he alone pleases, the wife not retaining the right
to its use or its management in any way whatsoever. There are other states
where the separate property of the husband and the wife is made communal,

but in those states the control of this communal property is in the husband’s
hands. In most states the old restrictions still exist, and a woman cannot
make a will; cannot act as executrix or administratrix; can neither sue nor
be sued. In the largest proportion of the states in which the separate
property of the wife is recognized, the husband still has the advantage in
heirship. In less than one-fifth of the states has the wife the same control
over the children of the marriage as the husband. In the remaining four-
fifths and over, the father is assumed to be sole owner of the children, who
can be bound out, willed or given away without the consent or even
knowledge of the mother. Can barbarism go farther than this?
So that even in this year 1892, within eight years of the Twentieth Christian
century, we find the largest proportion of the United States still giving to the
husband custody of the wife’s person; the exclusive control of the children
of the marriage; of the wife’s personal and real estate; the absolute right to
her labor and all products of her industry. In no state does the law recognize
the legal existence of the wife, unless she relinquishes her own name, upon
marriage, taking that of her husband, thus sinking her identity in his; the old
femme covert,—or covered woman,—idea of the law books under state and
church. That woman is an individual with the right to her own separate
existence, has not yet permeated the thought of church, state or society. A
letter to the American press from Rev. Robert Laird Collyer, while re-
visiting his native country a few years since, gives the unbiased views of a
native-born English clergyman, as to woman’s position in that land of
christian civilization, the husband being represented as king of the
household, the wife as his dutiful subject. The letter was headed:

MARRIAGE CUSTOMS IN ENGLAND
The Man King of the House, the Woman His Dutiful Subject.

The man is the king of the English household, and the wife is only the
prime minister. There is no confusion or overlapping of authority. The
will of the husband is law. He has not only the place of honor but of
ease. The arrangements of the house, the company entertained, and the
service employed, all have respect to his wishes and to his convenience.

The wife conducts the affairs of state for the king. She has her
household and, more than likely, her personal allowance, and she
renders a strict account of stewardship either weekly or monthly.
The wife’s personal expenditures are less, much less than the husband’s.
In many instances he will spend more on his dress as a man than she
does as a woman, for the rule is, the Englishman is the best-dressed man
and the English woman is the worst dressed in the civilized world.
“The will of the husband is law,” the wife possessing no freedom, but
renders “a strict account of her stewardship, either weekly or monthly.”
Kicks, blows, wounds inflicted upon the wife under the countenance of the
civil law; the will of the husband as undisputed law; her person, her
property, her children under his sole control; what is the condition of the
wife in England today but one of degraded slavery? That every woman does
not endure all these wrongs is simply because she has a lenient master. Like
Adolph under St. Clair, in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she has freedom because a
good master allows her to take it; under a bad master she suffers as Adolph
when falling into the hands of Legree. Personal rights are the basis of all
other rights; personal slavery is the root of all other wrongs. Neither
freedom of the intellect or conscience can exist without freedom of person.
Thus civilization has not yet existed, that which has borne the name having
been but the thought of the few; the civilization of the present is not
enlightened, it belongs to the barbarous ages; authority and not justice is the
rule. To the present time the lenient sentence imposed upon the English
husband who beats his wife is such as to invite a repetition of the offense;
knocking a wife down, beating and bruising her with a poker are rights
secured to the husband under present English law.
A man named Hefferon, at Rotherham, finding his wife had gone to
some place of which he disapproved, knocked her down and beat her
violently with a poker. She bled from both ears, her throat was
scratched, and she was badly bruised on her back and arms. Mr. Justice
Day practically told the jury to acquit. He said the case ought not to
have come before them, and he suggested that the prisoner had been
merely exercising that control over his wife which was still sanctioned
by the law of England.[43] The jury acquitted promptly, as directed.[44]

To such extent is this abuse of woman under law as to have called forth a
vigorous article in the Westminister Review,[45] under head of “The Law in
Relation to Woman.”
There is another cruel injustice to woman, which is so notorious as to
have become a mere truism. It is referred to almost daily, yet familiarity
has bred such contempt, that it goes on unchecked and unabated. We
refer to the monstrously lenient sentences passed upon husbands who
assault and beat their wives. In one of our criminals courts recently, two
men and a woman were sentenced to six years penal servitude for
stealing a watch by force, while a man who assaulted and grievously
wounded his wife and mother-in-law with a reaping hook, got eighteen
months’ imprisonment. An instance occurred the other day in a small
municipal court. A man pleaded guilty to assaulting and kicking his wife
and another woman with effusion of blood and injury to their persons.
He was fined a pound for each female. Shortly after two men were
convicted of injuring public seats belonging to the municipality, by
knocking them about, etc., they were fined two pounds each. Clearly,
therefore, in the eyes of this magistrate a municipal seat is worth exactly
twice the value of a woman. Parallel sentences to these may be seen
almost daily in the newspapers in any part of the United Kingdom. In
the police courts, wife-beaters often get off with a few days
imprisonment, sometimes with an admonition. If it be argued that theft
is such a common offense that it is necessary that it should be punished
with greater severity than cruelty, we rejoice that the argument applies
quite as forcibly to wife-beating, which, unfortunately is as common an
offence as can be found among a certain class of society.[46]
The comparison here shown between the penalty of criminally assaulting
and wounding women, not alone the man’s wife but also her aged mother,
most forcibly shows the entire disregard of Christian England in the last
half of the nineteenth century, for the personal rights of all women. No
proof is needed other than such decisions; nor is the United States far in
advance. Within ten months from the formation of the “Protective Agency
for Women and Children,” organized in Chicago, April 1886, it had
investigated nearly one hundred complaints. Although in a majority of these
cases the agency was successful in securing redress, it yet found there was
not legal remedy where the husband and father failed to provide for his

family; and that in cases of crimes against women, its efforts were crippled
by the disposition of police justices to regard such crimes as venial
offenses, either dismissing such cases upon frivolous pretexts or imposing
light sentences. Nothing could more clearly demonstrate women’s degraded
condition in the nineteenth century of christian civilization, than the almost
universal demand for laws securing better protection to women and
children. These two classes, unrecognized by church or state, are still
largely without that pale of protection man has reared for himself. January
23, 1886, the Inter Ocean, gave more than six columns to an account of the
dreadful crimes committed against women and children in Chicago alone,
within the short period of the preceding four months. It also showed the
ease with which criminals of that class escaped punishment, not alone from
laxity of protective legislation for their victims but still more from the
tendency of magistrates to ignore crimes perpetrated by men against
women; this condition being the natural result of the teaching of the church
in regard to woman. In the city of Boston, 1884, the Chief of Police,
testified that there were at least fifteen cases of brutal wife-beating in that
city every week, and this is but one type of the injuries perpetrated upon
women for which the teachings of christianity are directly responsible. So
common this crime and so ineffective all efforts to stop it, that the State of
Delaware has re-established the long abolished whipping-post, for offenders
of this character, thus acknowledging christian civilization to be a failure,
and resorting to the retributive punishment common among barbarians. But
the remedy for crimes against women, and for the indifference of
magistrates, does not lie in the punishment of the offenders, but in different
sentiments in regard to woman in both church and state. Their teachings are
the real foundations of the evil. Within the past ten years, the judge of an
English Court decided that the flogging of a wife in the presence of her son
did not constitute cruelty, sustaining his decision by reference to Blackstone
and other learned christian jurists. It was during that same year (1884) that
the chief of the Boston police testified to the many cases of brutal wife
beating in that “Athens of America,” every week. So common this form of
assault that a bill was introduced in the Massachusetts lower House for the
punishment of wife beaters, by a public whipping of not less than ten or
more than thirty lashes.[47] For those refractory wives of mediaeval
christian England, whom whippings failed to subdue, other punishments
were invented; such as the “Ducking Stool,” the “Scold’s Bridle,” etc.[48]

The Scold’s Bridle, also known as the Witches Bridle and the Brank, was an
extremely painful method of torture, although not as absolutely dangerous
to life as the Ducking Stool, yet fastened in the mouth, its sharp edges
pressing down upon the tongue, if the “Brawling Woman” attempted to
speak her tongue was cut and the torture great.[49] An American clergyman
describing in a public lecture an “ancient machine” seen by him in christian
England, “for curing a scolding wife,” accompanied his description by the
very clerical intimation that it could now be made by an ordinary
blacksmith. Two curved plates of bronze conformed to the shape of the
head, were delicately hinged and provided with hooks to place in the
corners of the mouth. When adjusted, the machine was buckled back of the
head.[50]

The Ducking Stool[51] consisted of a chair securely fastened upon a long
plank balanced upon upright standards, and so arranged that the victim
could be launched sixteen or eighteen feet into the pond or stream, while
the executioner of the sentence stood upon dry ground. The back and arms
of the chair were engraved with representations of devils torturing scolds.
The culprit securely fastened in this chair, so confined as to be entirely
helpless, was sometimes drowned; the chair being plunged once, twice, or
thrice in some muddy stream or slimy pond. The suggestive and usual place
of storing the Ducking Stool, when not in use, was the church-yard. Almost
every English town of importance possessed one; their use was continued
until the present century. The Leominster Ducking Stool, still preserved,
was used in 1809, by order of the magistrates, upon a woman named Jane
Corran, who received her punishment near Kenwater Bridge. As late as
1817 Sarah Leeke was wheeled around town in this chair, although the
lowness of the stream prevented the ducking[52] she would otherwise have
received. Railing and scolding or “answering back,” were deemed crimes
on the part of the wife, who, “commanded to be under obedience,” was
expected silently to submit to oppression of every kind. That she did not—
that she dared revolt by words—that women in sufficient number to cause
the invention of such an instrument, were rebellious in midst of the horrid
oppression created by the church, speaks well for the womanly nature and
thrills the heart with admiration the same as when old Margaret Pole,
Countess of Salisbury, refused to lay her head on the block at the
executioner’s mandate, declaring that as she was innocent, she would not

voluntarily place herself in position for death. While England has the shame
of originating the Ducking Stool, the “Pilgrim Fathers,” fleeing from
religious persecution, failed not to take with them the implements of cruelty
used in the domestic oppression of woman. The Ducking Stool, and the
“Stool of Penitence” figure in the early annals of New England. Upon the
latter, the Scarlet Letter of shame affixed upon her breast, the unmarried
mother was forcibly seated beneath the pulpit, under public gaze, while her
companion in sin protected by church and state, perchance held his place
among the elders in the jury box, or upon the bench as the judge who had
condemned her. Old Colonial legislation makes us acquainted with the
various methods in use for punishing the free speech of women in this
country two hundred years since.
“A Law to Punish Babbling Women” enacted by the General Assembly,
of Virginia, 1662.
Whereas, many babbling women slander and scandalize their neighbors,
for which their poor husbands are often involved in chargable and
vexatious suits and cost in great damages. Be it therefore enacted by the
authority aforesaid, that in actions of slander caused by the wife, after
judgment passed for damages, the wife shall be punished by ducking;
and if the slander be so enormous as to be judged at greater damages
than 500 lbs. of tobacco, then the wife to suffer ducking for each 500
pounds of tobacco adjudged against the husband, if he refuses to pay the
tobacco.
As this was the state in which wives were bought in exchange for tobacco,
it is not surprising to find the penalty of her free speech to be paid in
tobacco, the wife to suffer ducking for each 500 pounds penalty in excess of
the first. Massachusetts was not long in following the example of Virginia,
and in 1672 ten years later, passed A Law for the Punishment of Scolds in
Massachusetts.
Whereas, there is no express punishment (by law hitherto established)
affixed to the evil practice of sundry persons by exhorbitancy of tongue
in reviling and scolding; it is therefore ordered that all such persons
convicted before any court or magistrate that hath proper cognizance of
the case, shall be gagged, set in a ducking stool and dipped over head

and ears three times, in some convenient place of fresh or salt water, as
the court or magistrate shall judge meet.[53]
Nor must we believe that the punishment of women for use of the tongue, is
of past ages. Even in the United States, women are to this day sometimes
arraigned for free speaking. Laws to punish “babbling women” enacted in
colonial days are still in force. It is but a few years since a woman of St.
Louis was arrested and brought before a magistrate as a common scold.[54]
In the State of New Jersey, 1884, a woman was brought before the courts,
convicted, on the old grounds of being a “common scold” and fined $25,
and costs. Death not infrequently accompanied the use of the ducking stool,
the poor gagged victim, her hands securely fastened, being utterly unable to
help herself. But we do not learn that either the magistrate or the husband
was held responsible to the law for such death. The sufferers, like those
under the catholic inquisition of the fourteenth century, were deemed
outside of the pale of sympathy or human rights, and the devils depicted
upon the back of ducking stools as laying hold of their victims, were
conceded to have but taken their rightful prey.
Such has been part of Christian legislation for women in America, and yet
she is told to see how much Christianity has done for her. To such extent
has this church doctrine of man’s superiority to woman, and the right of the
husband to control of the wife proceeded, that many husbands believe they
possess the right to sell their wives. Since the reformation her sale in the
market-place as an animal, held by a halter about her waist, has been
recognized by English law even as late as the present century. Although
now forbidden, the practice of wife-sale is still occasionally found both in
England and in America. But when the law takes cognizance of such a sale
its penalty is visited upon the innocent wife and not upon the guilty
husband. The English Women’s Suffrage Journal of December 1st, 1883,
reported such a case.
November 13th, 1883, Betsy Wardle, was indicted for having on the 4th
of September, 1882, married George Chusmall, her former husband
being alive. The prisoner pleaded guilty, but said her former husband
gave her no peace and sold her for a quart of beer. She imagined this
was a legal transaction, and that she could marry again. The second
husband was asked how he came to marry the prisoner. He answered

“Well, I bout her.” The judge said, “You are not fool enough to suppose
you can buy another man’s wife?” on which he replied, “I was.”
Mr. Swift asked his lordship not to pass a severe sentence. The prisoner
imagined that because she had been sold for sixpence there was nothing
criminal in marrying again. His lordship said it was absolutely
necessary to pass some punishment on her to teach her that a man had
no more right to sell his own wife than his neighbor’s wife, or cow, or
ox, or ass, or anything that was his.
The reason given by the judge for punishing the woman, is extremely
suggestive of woman’s condition under the law. The wife who had been
sold, the innocent victim of this masculine transaction, was sentenced to a
week’s imprisonment with hard labor, while the man who sold her and the
man who bought her escaped without punishment or censure. The judge in
quoting the tenth commandment, graded the wife with the ox and the ass in
the belongings of a man; the decision thus ranking her with the cattle of the
stable.[55] To add to the infamy of the trial, it was the occasion of much
unseemly jesting and laughter. It took place at the Liverpool Assizes before
Justice Denham. His judgement paralleled the decision of the “Seney Trial”
in Ohio, 1879. The selling a wife as a cow[56] in the market place was by no
means uncommon during the early part of the century in England.
Ashton[57] give numerous instances of such sales.
The laws of England are those of Christianity based upon the theological
teaching of man’s superiority over woman; she is his servant, subordinate to
him in all things, a condition except where removed by special statute,
existing today.[58] Returned missionaries who refer to the wife as waiting
upon the husband at table in heathen countries not eating until he is
satisfied, as proof of the different customs brought about by christianity,
should inform themselves of the condition of the christian wife for nearly a
thousand years in what is regarded as the foremost christian country in the
world. He will then have learned that circumstances quite contradictory to
ecclesiasticism finally permitted the English wife to assume a seat at the
table with her husband, a place she was not allowed to take for many
hundred years after the introduction of christianity into that island. In every
country where christianity exists, women now are, and during all the years
of its civil power have been, legislated for as slaves. They have been

imprisoned for crimes which if committed by a man were punished by
simply branding on the hand; they have been condemned to be buried alive
for other crimes which if committed by a man, were atoned for by the
payment of a fine. Having first robbed woman of her property and denied
her the control of her own earnings, the christian religion allowed her to
suffer the most agonizing form of death, a living burial, for lack of that very
money of which she had been civilly and ecclesiastically robbed. The law
so far controlled family life that for many hundred years it bound to servile
labor, all unmarried women between the ages of eleven and forty. The father
possessed absolute control over the marital destiny of his daughter.
Instances of wife sale are not uncommon in the United States, and although
the price is usually higher than that given for English wives, reaching from
three hundred to four thousand dollars, still, as low a sum as five cents has
been recorded. A prosperous resident of Black Hills, Dakota, is said to have
begun his business start in life through sale of his wife. If a wife is a
husband’s property the same as a cow, it is manifestly unjust that legal
punishment of any kind should fall upon her because of her master’s action.
She is irresponsible. The right of sale logically goes with the right of
beating, of taking the wife’s property and holding her earnings, of owning
her children and she should be exempt from punishment for her own sale.
In a much larger measure we find the same rule of punishing wives for the
crimes of husbands, enforced in the United States, in the penalty of
disfranchisement of the women of Utah for the polygamy of the men of
Utah. And this penalty was extended not alone to the wives of polygamous
husbands—themselves possessing but one husband—victims alike of
church and state, but the non-Mormon or “Gentile Women” of that territory,
were also disfranchised by the XLIX Congress of the United States because
of the polygamy of a portion of the Mormon men; all women of that
territory were deprived of their vested rights, rights that had been in
existence for seventeen years, because of the crimes of men.[59] Against this
injustice, the Woman Suffragists of the country protested through means of
a committee in a

MEMORIAL.

To the President of the United States:
The National Woman Suffrage Association, through this committee,
respectfully present to you a protest against that clause of the anti-
polygamy measure passed by congress, which, whether in the Edmunds
bill of the senate or the Tucker substitute of the house, disfranchises the
non-polygamous women of Utah.
The clause relating to the disfranchisement of women has no bearing on
the general merits of the end sought to be attained by the measure, since
Mormon men are the majority of the voters of the territory.
The non-polygamous women of Utah have committed no crime.
Disfranchisement is reserved by the United States government for arch
traitors. Justice forbids that such a penalty should be inflicted on
innocent women.
Non-polygamous Mormon women and the Christian women of Utah
being thus disfranchised—the former for their opinions and the latter for
the opinions of the former—a precedent is established subversive of the
fundamental principles of our government, and threatening the security
of all citizens.
If congress deems it necessary to disfranchise citizens because of
injurious beliefs, discrimination between sexes is manifestly unjust.
It has been held by the foremost statesmen of the nation that the right of
suffrage once exercised, becomes a vested right which cannot be taken
away. Gratz Brown once said, in the senate of the United States, that if
the idea that suffrage could be taken away at pleasure once crystallized
in the minds of the people, it would “ring the death knell of American
liberty.” Mr. Vest, of Missouri, on the 25th day of this month, said, on
the floor of the senate: “Suffrage once given can never be taken away.
Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do
that. When any particular class or fraction of the community is once
invested with this privilege it is fixed, accomplished and eternal.”

Thus every argument for justice, equal legislation and the safety of our
republican form of government calls for the defeat of this clause.
We, therefore, respectfully urge you, as guardian of the rights of all
American citizens, to veto any measure coming before you which
disfranchises the women of Utah.
Lillie Devereux Blake,
Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Caroline Gilkey Rogers,
Mary Seymour Howell,
Clara B. Colby,
Sarah Miller,
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,
Harriette R. Shattuck,
Louisa Southworth,

Committee
This memorial, supplemented by personal argument from the committee
demonstrating the political dangers connected with such a denial of vested
rights, together with the greater injustice of punishing women for the crimes
of men, was met by reply of the President that as great changes were
frequently made in bills before their final passage, he had as yet not given
the subject much thought; promising, however to give it his fullest attention
whenever brought before him. The method taken by the president to avoid
responsibility of decision, is notable as he neither signed nor vetoed the bill,
but allowed it to become law through such non-action. Crimes of omission
being parallel with those of commission, the women of the United States
can but hold Grover Cleveland equally guilty with the XLIX Congress in
punishing women for the crimes of men.
The Code of England, from which that of the United States is largely
borrowed, was the outgrowth of Christianity, based upon a belief in man’s
superiority and woman’s subordination to him as entering every relation of
life. All legislation was class; the line was sex. During the early and middle
ages man exhibited an antagonism towards woman,[60] which if not wholly
created by religious belief was strenuously fostered by the church. Man’s

basest passion, love of power, was appealed to and he was assured by what
he had been trained to regard as indisputable authority, that God had
ordained his rule over woman. A quick response met all such priestly
teaching. Christianity has ever been a religion of the emotions rather than of
the reason. The former was cultivated; the latter bitterly condemned. The
church has ever found its most powerful enemy in reason, hence the
exercise of reason has ever been a crime in her eyes.
During the Christian ages the different code of morals for man and woman
has created infinite wrong. Open and notorious vice among both churchmen
and laymen passed unreproved, but an heiress forfeited her possessions by
unchastity, and wily plans were laid to thus gain possession of her property,
the betrayer receiving payment from the guardian, whose tool he was, for
his perfidy.[61] To this moral code we trace the present legal condition of
girls, daughters having no status in the courts in case of betrayal. The father
alone, as master and owner, can sue for loss of her services, while the injury
to herself is passed by, even upon so momentous a question as the paternity
of a child born out of wedlock.
Many of the most flagrant wrongs perpetrated against woman can be traced
to a denial of a right of ownership, beginning with the denial of her right to
herself. Even the Salic law which in France was used to bar the succession
of woman to the throne, was not specifically or primarily in favor of males;
it was a property law growing out of the patriarchal idea of property in
woman. Under Christian form of marriage, woman was transferred to
another family whose name she took. She not only became the property of
her husband but all real or personal estate which she possessed, also became
his. Thus her property went to the enrichment of another family. Her home
was no longer with her own people, but where her husband chose to make
it. Salic law derived its name from Sala, a house. Salic land, said
Montesquieu, was the land belonging to the house.[62] At time of its
adoption the line of descent was male. Under it during the middle ages
when a daughter married, she received merely a chaplet of roses.
Thenceforth, her interests were elsewhere, and her children became part of
another family; she was entirely lost to the family of her birth. As she was
no longer a part of it she did not receive inheritance. “It was not a subject of
affection but gens.”

Guizot with a fine sense of irony, termed Salic law essentially a penal code.
Its application to woman was incontestibly penal. In France its action has
been most pronounced. Robertson speaks of the Salic law as the most
venerable monument of French jurisprudence, although the real period of its
birth has never yet been fully acknowledged. While during the struggle of
Phillippa de Valours, and Edward III for the crown of France, this law was
invoked to prevent the succession of Phillippa, yet we know that in Gaul
during the time of Caesar, mothers had sole authority over their children,
even boys remaining in entire charge of the mother until old enough for
instruction in arms. Wives also possessed property rights, upon marriage the
husband adding the same amount of property he had received with his wife.
This was kept as a separate fund, the survivor taking the whole. Hallum
designated the contest between Phillippa and Edward as in every way
remarkable, but especially on account of its result in the exclusion of
woman from the succession,[63] then first suggested. It was the Latin races
rather than the Scandinavian or Teutonic that first essentially degraded
woman. The Riparian Franks, pre-eminent as lovers of liberty, were the first
who broke away from the rule of this law. Both the Scandinavians and
Teutons possessed prophetic women or priestesses to whom the highest
deference was shown. The Teutonic races were early noted for the high
respect in which they held women, a respect closely bordering upon
veneration. The greatest deference was shown to their opinions even upon
war, the chief business of men’s lives. Victoria received the title of “Mother
of Camps,” and was an especially venerated person. Veleda by superior
genius, directed the counsels of the nation and for nine years prevented the
progress of the imperial armies of Rome. The most momentous questions of
state and of religion were submitted to woman’s divine judgment.
The relation between the wrongs of woman and her non-ownership of
property, and of herself, are very complicated. The custom of Marquette
originated from the theory of property in woman; the Suzerain or lord
possessing not only a certain property right in his male vassals, but a double
right to the woman who as a bride became the property of his vassal. Thus
Marquette was the outgrowth of the husband’s property right in his wife,
and a secondary result of man’s assumed right of property in woman. In
France, where the Salic law possessed greatest strength we find the custom
of marquette most prevalent. Next to marquette, the law known as “Mund”

or “Mundium” offered the greatest indignity to woman, and in some
respects may be called more vile. While the baseness of marquette took its
victims from a class beneath the lord in social standing, Mundium entered
the family, the father selling his daughter to such wooer as he chose, or
from whom he received the greatest payment, entirely regardless of the
wishes of the daughter herself. The Salic law seemed to have been founded
on the principle of the Mund, as under it a sum was paid by the husband to
the family of the bride in consideration of the transference of the authority
they possessed over her, to the husband, and this payment was known as
“Mundium” and the bride as a “Mund” bought woman. In Denmark, to
which country the custom of mundium extended, her appellation was
“mundikeypt-krom,” signifying a mund bought woman. At that period
descent was reckoned from the father, to whom alone the children were held
to be related, and his relinquishment of authority by sale of his daughter,
transferred her relationship from her father to her husband, and she thus
became a component part of another family. She no longer belonged to the
family of her birth, but to that of her purchaser. The Franks were the first to
break Salic customs and to permit a father to settle an estate upon his
daughter and her children.[64] Under the law of Gavelkind as it existed in
Great Britain, daughters never inherited, although the rights of even an
illegitimate son was recognized as equal to those of legitimate sons. By the
laws of gavelkind, property could not descend to women, but the County of
Kent possessed more freedom than in any other part of England. There was
a custom of privilege annexed to all lands of this kind in Kent, among them,
that the wife should be endowed with a moiety; gavelkind land was
devisable by will. Ordinarily in gavelkind, property was kept in male hands,
descending from father to son. The very name gavelkind is said to bear this
signification, the word Kynd is dutch signifying a male child, thus gife eal
cyn, means give all to the son. Its modern signification is the custom of
partition of property among males alone, or the greatest share to the oldest
son.
Lord Coke looked upon the practice of gavelkind among the Irish as a mark
of their descent from the ancient Britons. At this period wives were not
entitled to dower, thus in respect to property, all women of the family were
equally disinherited. But it was the opinion of Lord Holt that by the
Common Law, both before and after the conquest, all the children, both