Authentic Feminism in History

The role of women in history is greatly misunderstood. It is presumed that because it was only over the last hundred years that women the right to vote in many places in the world, and because the "right" to abortion has been granted, that women in the past have always been oppressed far more than they are now. Unfortunately, this is not quite true.

Not everything progresses, and in fact there has been a regression in the rights and position of women over the past many centuries. For instance, it is often assumed that what happened in the "dark ages" was regressive, yet during this time, in direct contrast to the pagans around them, Catholic Christians treated women in a way that was unheard of. Women even voted! Motherhood was elevated to the sacred and each child, each person was valued not for what they could contribute, but valued because God valued each and every human being. Unfortunately this situation has been reversing over time, and will most probably get worse before it gets better.

Last week, a Hand Mirror author, ex-expat, said:

Perhaps an avenue that pro-life advocates may want to mull over when talking about abortion, as aside from contraception having a society in which pregnancy and parenthood is valued and supported would likely encourage more women to choose the baby option than banning the practice altogether.

As I said at the time, I've been thinking about this very thing for a long time, and also writing about it in bits and pieces over the years. But I'd like to write a post that answers the proposition definitively. Unfortunately the only way I can do that is to continue to write in bits and pieces and then link everything together.

So to that end, I'm putting up the following comment by Poorclear, a commenter from the Being Frank website on the the influence of the Catholic Church on the Role of Women in History. It's long comment, but well worth reading and is reproduced here with the writer's permission. The comment is a summary of the book, Women in the Age of Cathedrals by Regine Pernoud, which is currently out of print, and was used as notes to a talk on that subject. At the end of the post are a number of links to more reading.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN HISTORY

The particular nature of the Christian revelation and the emerging Catholic Church brought about a progressive liberation and flowering of women in European history until the 13th Century. After that, the gains of Christianity were gradually eroded with a desire to emulate once again the ancient Roman and Greek worlds. The feminism that emerges anew in the 20th Century lacks many of the healthy characteristics of an authentic feminism that flourished, despite what many might imagine, in the middle ages.

France as a nation begins with Clovis, the king, largely through the influence of his wife Clotilda. She was instrumental in the conversion of her husband to Christianity. The Roman empire had floundered, the only remains of order was the unity between bishops throughout France. With Clovis’ conversion, he got the support of the bishops. Gregory of Tours records the Queen’s pleadings with the reluctant king:

The gods you venerate are nothing, as they are unable to provide for the needs of others. They are idols made of wood, stone or metal … They are magicians, their power does not have a divine origin. The God who must be worshipped is he whose Word brought out of nothing the heavens, the earth, the sea and all they contain … It is by his will that the fields produce their harvests, the trees their fruits, the grapevines their grapes. It is by his hand that the human race was created. Thanks to his liberality, all creation has been set to serve man, is submitted to him and showers him with its blessings.

The king wanted proof of God’s divinity. Clotilda bore his first son, insisted he be baptized and had the Church draped in beautiful cloths to touch her husband. The child was baptized and received the name Ingomer, but died a few days later. Clotilda’s reaction is recorded: “I thank Almighty God, Creator of all things, who has deigned to honour my unworthiness by opening his kingdom to this child to whom I gave birth. My soul is not touched by pain, for I know that, taken from the world in the innocence of his baptism, my son is being nourished by the contemplation of God.”

Her second son, Chlodomer was also very sick after birth but recovered “thanks to his mother’s prayers.” Clovis himself became Catholic after invoking ‘Clotilda’s God’ when his own strength was defeated. With him came 3000 soldiers, and the ruler was united with his people by religion. It is important that Clotilda was Catholic and not Arian, like the barbarians from the north.

Clovis and Clotilda made their residence at Lutetia (in modern Paris) and met the famous virgin Genevieve (who was 70 years old when they were married and 89 when she died.) At the age of 28, she had prophesied to the Parisians not to flee the invading Huns, because they would not reach Paris. She was proved true and this established her reputation as far as Simon Stylites in Syria.

In the sixth century in Italy, Theodelinda of Bavaria married Agilulf, an Arian and succeeded in having her son Adaloald baptized Catholic, leading in the end to the conversion of Northern Italy to the Christian faith. In Spain, the duke of Toledo, Leovigild, restored royal authority and married a Catholic in 573, Theodosia, who converted him to Catholicism (she was the sister of three bishops). 20 years later in England in 597, Bertha of Kent succeeded in having King Athelberht baptized. To this we could add mention of the nuns in Germany who ardently helped St. Boniface and the first Russian convert, Olga, princess of Kiev, and the Baltic countries who owed their conversion to Hedwig of Poland.
The emergence of women in European history coincides with the emergence of Christianity and is intrinsically linked to it.

We can see the nature of the emerging liberation of women by examining the legal situation in the ancient Roman Empire and contrasting it to the Middle Ages.

Women were not the subject of Roman law. A woman’s personal condition, relationships with parents or husband, all fell within the competence of the father, father-in-law or husband, who was the all powerful chief. Women were only objects. Women exercised no political role nor administrative function in the assembly of citizens or the magistracy or the tribunals. They could take part in feasts, spectacles and banquets. The father’s power over the life and death of children was total. His will in who she was to marry was very important. Only he could take her life if she was guilty of adultery, while the husband could kill her accomplice. A son’s adultery was only punished in the later empire and this by the return of the wife’s dowry. Only in the later empire was their any protection for women against being kidnapped or raped.

The preaching of the gospel contained an amazing newness with regard to the equal dignity of women:

“The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she is guilty of adultery too.” (Mk 10:11-12; Mt. 19:9)

Jesus gave the doctrine of the coming worship of God in spirit and in truth to a Samaritan woman; he had refused to condemn a woman caught in adultery but merely commanded her: “Go away and sin no more”; and he first appeared to women after the Resurrection.

This had profound effect on the first few centuries of the history of Christianity: for example, in the Petit Larousse dictionary, the names given for the second and third centuries contain only 3-4 men, but 21 women. 19 of them are saints, who are remembered by the Church, while the names of emperors have been forgotten. Almost all are young women or girls who died for their faith: Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Catherine, Margaret, Eulalia etc.

In the days between the apostles and the Church fathers, it is women who were honoured by the Church. In a page of the martyrs of Lyons, Blandina, a slave girl, is alongside Bishop St. Pothinus of Smyrna. As a slave she could have been put to death at any time by a pagan master without thought – but she is elevated in the Church’s memory for her death for Jesus Christ.

Agnes, Cecilia and Lucy were killed for refusing to marry those designated by their fathers, because God had called them to holy virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

At this time, Roman fathers might only let one girl live (the eldest), though he would keep his healthy sons to serve the military. Each boy received a first name, while the eldest girl had only the father’s family name. Cornelia’s brothers are Publius Cornelius, Gaius Cornelius etc. The attitude where a daughter would refuse her father’s marriage plans was radical in the Roman world. The defiance earned them their deaths.

In 390, the father lost his right in law to kill his children. In the Roman world the father could have killed his children after birth, or try to kill them in the womb. Christianity upheld the right to live for every child from the earliest time in the womb. The Christian respect for the life of a baby was a new thing in the ancient world.

Married women had always enjoyed some status in the ancient world. But Christ extends it to all: “There are eunuchs born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs made so by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt. 19:12)

From the beginning of Christianity, women understood that they had a new freedom: to follow their vocations. The gospel gave them what no ancient law had granted them. They could decide their own existence in that they were free to respond to God’s call for their lives. And they were prepared to die out of fidelity to this vocation. This was effectively a living out of what St. Paul taught about the equal dignity given in baptism: there is no more Jew or Greek, man or woman.

There was a new and equal dignity: that of PERSONHOOD.

Christianity, in needing to proclaim the Trinity, had to develop a language to express what had been revealed: God was one, but in Three Persons. What then is a PERSON. This concept, brought to the fore in the Trinitarian discussions, was to have huge ramifications for women, children and slaves, for all were PERSONS.

Virgins and widows had a special status in the early Church. Widows were more pitied than respected in the pagan or Jewish worlds. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that in the first Christian communities, widows were the first to be helped. They soon progressed, with virgins, to have a real function in the work of God in the early Church. St. Paul gives instructions for both vocations, and St. Luke’s gospel also makes clear the extraordinary prominence of women in the early Church.

In the Roman world, virgins had some status, and were donated by their fathers for the task of keeping the sacred fire burning. But this was again a mark of the father’s ownership.

In the Roman aristocracy in the fourth century, conversions to Christianity mainly concerned women. It was only in the following generations, through marriage that many pagan husbands converted, marrying Christian wives.

Fabiola was a woman of the Roman aristocracy who became a disciple of St. Jerome. She founded a house for the sick to tend to pilgrims who came to Rome – thus, she established the first hospital. In Ostia she created a pilgrim’s landing port, the first hostel. The medieval hospital system, which became very well developed, and the network of hostels for pilgrims that developed bear witness to her influence on future generations.

Nursing sisters or nuns had great influence on the development of care for the sick. In 651 in Paris, the Hotel-Dieu was founded, where for 1200 years now, women and men religious have given free care to the sick who came to them. The scope of activity was great: eg in 1368, the prioress Philippe du Bois notes that daily linen has reached 3500 sheets and other cloths. In the same time, the Parisian hospital of Saint James nearby gave asylum to 16690 pilgrims a year.

Two of Fabiola’s contempories, Melania the elder and Melania the younger. Melania the younger inherited immense estates from her grandmother and distributed them to her more than 1000 slaves. She later retired to the Holy Land joining a community of pious women that her grandmother had founded in Jerusalem. Her actions were concrete in the movement for the liberation of slaves.

The abandonment of slavery is a significant achievement of the Middle Ages, that began as early as the 4th century. The idea that the slave was a thing owned, without rights, could not survive the preaching of the gospel. From the time of Constantine the freeing of slaves became easier and the slave was given the right not to be separated from his family, along with the right to marry. The Code of Justinian decreed that a stay in a monastery with the view to joining it annulled any slavery. Justinian abolished the law that forbade freeing more than 100 slaves at a time. Church councils enacted measures to give slaves more and more human recognition. The Council of Elvira in Spain in 305 imposed a seven year penance on anyone who killed his slave. This was in the midst of a pagan world, where the murder of slaves was not considered to be a crime. The Council of Orleans in 511 gave the right of asylum in Churches for fleeing slaves, and the Council of Eauze in 551 automatically freed a slave whose master forced him to work on Sundays.

St. Caesarius of the fifth century defended his actions in buying the freedom of slaves with Church money saying: “God, who gave himself as the price of man’s redemption, will not reproach me for redeeming captives with the money from his altar.” 5th and 6th century books of tribunals show various formulae for emancipation of slaves for religious reasons.

In this reputedly brutal period, the slave who was considered a thing, became a person – he would progress to being a serf, who enjoyed the rights of a person. He gained the right to live, and more, to have a family and a home and lead his life as he wished, with the sole restriction that he remain on the land according to the norms of the feudal age.

The women around St. Jerome in the 4th Century provide the roots for female religious culture. The monastery in Bethlehem where Paula, Eustochium and companions lived, was a centre of studies. Paula learnt Hebrew. “She succeeded so well that she sang the Psalms in Hebrew and could speak this language without mixing any Latin with it.” The nuns studied the Psalms and the Scriptures and requested St. Jerome write a commentary on Ezekiel. Women’s monasteries from the beginning were marked by a desire for intellectual as well as spiritual life.

In the feudal age, women were the most devoted and ardent helpers of the Church. Fabiola started the first hospitals, Melania abolished slavery on her estates, Paula helped develop knowledge in herself and her companions … in all this we see the beginnings of monasteries where a high culture flourished, as well as those of chivalry, where the influence of the Church and of women would educate men and inculcate in them the ideal of the learned prince and the concern for the defense of the weak.

THE NUN

The first female monastery in France was in 513, when St. Caesarius wrote a rule for a group of virgins living around the Church of St Jean. The rule was similar to St. Benedict’s rule for monks more than a century earlier. The prioress would decide on the length of novitiate for an individual. Self-renunciation was important, with the relinquishing of all possessions before entering the convent. Within the monastery there would be no difference between rich and poor, noble-born or common. All would dress identically in simple white robes made by the community. Baths for hygiene must be taken without murmur. Work each day (spinning wool) must be done in silence. Everyone would take their turn in the kitchen. Every nun must learn to read and spend two hours reading every morning. The custom of reading silently was developed by monks and nuns. The religious dissociated reading from speaking. Silence was the rule for most things, including dinner time. There were times of silent prayer. The nuns would also care for the sick who lodged in a separate building, the infirmary. The nuns rose at night, prayed briefly, attended to bodily necessities, went to the oratory while praying Psalm 26 (To you O Lord I lift up my soul), bowed to the altar, went to her place of silent prayer. At the bell, the community would pray the Office. At the end of Matins (around midnight) they would rest again and rise at dawn (6am, earlier in Summer) at the ringing of the bell for Lauds and Prime. Then they confessed their sins. They rested again, then had reading, washing, and went back to Church for Terce and Mass. Breakfast followed (bread and drinks). They held chapter in the Chapter room, where the monthly calendar was announced with the saint of the day. The manuscripts were illuminated to honour the various saints and feasts. The chantress knew the calendar for the liturgy and the level of feast affected the day and the work. In chapter a part of the rule was read and the ceremony of faults took place. The abbess could give penances for graver faults. Silence was the rule for the church, dormitory and refectory. Talking was permitted in the cloister and elsewhere. Sext would take place around midday and a second Mass. The washing of hands and then lunch. The nuns took their place at table at the sounding of the cymbal and could begin once the abbess arrived. The reader read during the meal. The nuns on weekday service served the others, beginning with the last ones in and ending with the abbess. Then came siesta. At 3 pm was None followed by an afternoon drink. Then manual work. A light meal followed Vespers and at dusk, Compline concluded the day, followed by lights out and sleep.

They were not enclosed, but should leave the monastery only in twos and with permission. Enclosure was the rule for double monasteries (men and women). Only in 1298 did Pope Boniface VIII insist on enclosure for every nun. Even at this time, there were consecrated lay women who did not have to keep to the rules of enclosure.

There were fewer nuns than monks, but some convents had a wide influence.

Queen Radegund entered a monastery that she founded, taking the veil after her husband died. She gained a great reputation for holiness and inspired poems by Fortunatus (b. 530) who was to greatly influence the development of poetry and courtliness. In 567 he took Holy Orders and became a steward of the convent of the Holy Cross before becoming its chaplain in 576. At their request he wrote Pange Lingua Gloriosi and Vexilla Regis Prodeunt – which are still sung in the Church. These are among the oldest surviving hymns of the Church. He sent ‘courtly’ poems to the Queen and the abbess, inspired by the Virgin Mary and celebrating a pure admiration for womanhood that anticipated the Troubadours of the late middle ages.

“Honoured mother, sweet sister,
whom I revere with a faithful and pious heart,
with heavenly affection, without bodily touch,
it is not the flesh in me that loves
but rather the desire of the spirit …
which words shall I say to a beloved mother, to a sweet sister,
when alone, suffering the absence of the love in my heart?”

Fortunatus saluted the new abbess Agnes (only 20 years old) as ‘virgo, mater, domina’ – words borrowed from devotion to Mary. The beginnings of the ideal of womanhood in courtly poetry were made here at the monastery of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers.

A hundred years later, Queen Batilda founded the monastery of Chelles, and when her husband was ill, she administered the kingdom. Once he died, she entered the monastery. She was noted for her humility, undertaking the domestic tasks in the monastery. Many monasteries grew up, and they kept close ties. Some were founded by the Irish and the British. Many English monasteries were ravaged by the Vikings in the 7th century. Some survived, only to be methodically destroyed by Henry VIII in 1539.

Whitby in Yorkshire is the most famous. In 627, Edwin, the first Christian King of Northumbria and his grandniece Hilda were baptized. The king was killed by pagan Anglo-Saxons, but Hilda survived and founded the double monastery in Whitby. She took charge of studies herself. The nuns became protectresses of the arts and letters and also had a considerable influence on the evangelization of Germany.

Boniface had close contacts with English nuns. At his request, several went to Germany to assist evangelization by founding convents in Germany. Willibald wrote to a nun Eadburga: “Beloved sister, with your gift of holy books you comforted with a spiritual light the one who is exiled in Germany. For in this dark exile among the people of Germany, we would be distressed unto death if we did not have the divine Word as a lamp for our steps and the light for our way. Entrusting myself totally to your love, I beseech you to pray for me.”

Aldhelm of Malmesbury (639-709) wrote thanking the nuns personally (Justina, Cuthburga, Osburga, Ealdigth, Scholastica, Hidurga, Burngith, Eulalia and Tecla) for their labour in copying the holy books, and compares them to bees gathering from everywhere the honey of science, which they have given to him. He calls them ‘flowers of the Church, pearls of Christ, jewels of Paradise.”

The religious life flourished in Germany, with abbesses relating well to Empresses. The convents were centres of culture as well as prayer.

The nuns learned Latin, Greek, literature and law. They often converted women who would then convert their husbands. In the 10th-12th centuries, abbesses and emperesses have great influence in Germany, equivalent to their male counterparts.

Nuns also emerged as writers and composers. Notable is Hroswitha who wrote legends in verse and comedies that were played in the convent. She wrote in 965 an epic poem on Emperor Otto I for the use of his son Otto II (then aged 10). Hildegard of Bingen is one of the first known composers (most before then are anonymous). Born in 1098, the tenth child of the family, she was educated from 8 years by a nun called Judta and entered the convent at 15. She founded her own convents later and lived into her 80s. She had supernatural visions from aged 3 and transcribed them in 1141 in several books. She also wrote books of medicine and composed music that was collected with her cause. She was consulted by popes, emperors and saints (eg. Bernard). She wrote an encyclopaedia of world knowledge for the 12th century, touching on theological matters not yet ruled on by the Church, as well as containing poetry and music. She composed 74 hymns sequences and other works. She dictated her works to monk scribes. She made scientific discoveries that would become common only 500 years later: the sun as the centre of our world; the circulation of blood and so on. On Heretics she advised: “Chase these people out of the Church by expelling them, not by killing them, for they too are made in the image of God”.

WOMEN AND EDUCATION

The first treatise on education was written by a lay woman Dhuoda, “Manual for my son” in 841. Women are the natural first educators of children and know how to apply the principles of education for the particular child that they know better than anyone else. She wrote in Latin, the language of culture. Her husband Bernard took their second son with him on the campaigns to defend their territory and their oldest, William was in the service of the King as a ‘hostage’ or proof of loyalty. Dhuoda remained behind and looked after the estate, though she wrote the treatise to educate her elder son from a distance. She included many poems of the time and her own works. Her teaching is humbly prefaced: “I beseech you my son … I pray and suggest humbly to you ….” The first principle she set down was love: Love and seek God, love your younger brother, love your friends and companions among whom you live at the royal or imperial court, love the poor and the unhappy, love everyone so that you may be loved by all, they will all love you.”. She used the image of a herd of deer crossing a river, where the weakest is upheld by the others, with head and neck leaning on the back of another, taking turns, to exhort him to sympathy and compassion for the weak. She often taught by means of images and anecdotes. She alluded to Old Testament figures as though her son already was familiar with them. She assumes readily that he understands that the Bible is the Word of God and the font of endless knowledge and wisdom. She exorted him to pray, especially the psalms and alluded to praying them seven times a day herself. She constantly exorts him to read and pray and not be preoccupied with lesser concerns to the neglect of these. She sought to inculcate virtue over desire for wealth and status. She combined numerology, arithmetic and the learning of the essentials of theology and virtue. Her work is steeped in the Bible, the Church Fathers, quotations from the time as well as her intimate thoughts and inspirations. She also knew the work of poets and philosophers. She had interest in the work of craftsmen and in games. Her grandson, also William, may have taken up her wisdom more than his uncle William, for he founded the monastery of Cluny in 910 through which would eventually come the reform of the whole clergy.

There are many references to women advanced in learning, trained in literature and writing. Many illustrated books of Hours were decorated for women, some of whom were queens or princesses. The historian Karl Bartsch who collated the observations and listings of works copied for ladies was able to conclude in 1883: “In the Middle Ages, women read more than men.” The manuscripts were also often copied by women. Many manuscripts that are arduously copied have a postscript asking for blessings for the copyist who is sometimes named. A significant proportion of these are women.

Noble women could have a tutor or educator appointed to them as they grew up, and these teachers could be women. Nuns were entrusted with the education of girls and often of little boys from noble families. The rule of St. Caesarius for the female monastery was that people couldn’t be admitted to the monastery until they were 6 or 7 years old, for educating, and thus they were in a sense also schools. In the feudal era and the Middle Ages, a nun was in charge of the education of children (boys up to age 12 and girls even beyond that). Lay women also ran schools. From the tax register, at the end of the 13th century, there were 22 school mistresses in Paris. Women also organized food for needy children at the school.

Children learnt Scripture, the psalms, literature and grammar. Some nuns taught Hebrew and Greek. In the 14th Century, Villani’s chronicle estimates that 1 in every 2 children attended school, and this applied to both boys and girls. Yet it was at this time, especially where ancient Rome was being rediscovered and idolized, that the education of girls began to be questioned. Some thought it a waste to educate them, others thought they should be only educated in domestic tasks, unless they were to be nuns, but even here, it began to be considered that their theological studies need not be comparable to men and the universities that developed at this time tended to become the province of men. Part of the collapse of Europe around the 14th century was due to the famine of 1315-17, the plague of 1348 and the Anglo French wars.
We could also note that the best known encyclopaedia of knowledge in the 12th Century was “Garden of Delights” by a woman Herrad of Landsberg.

FEMININITY

Feminine beauty was commented on constantly by poets of the Middle Ages, and also by philosophers and theologians. Guibert of Nogent saw in the beauty of women a direct and immediate mirror of God’s immutable and infinite beauty. Hugh of St. Victor saw visible beauty as a reflection of invisible beauty. The influence and activities of women in the Middle Ages had not been won at the expense of femininity, which is prized, valued and celebrated, and clearly manifested in the elegance and beauty of the feminine dress of the time.

COURTLINESS

The man of the late Middle Ages needed to be courtly – but in what did this consist? The lady demands that her courtly suitor be rich in generosity to all and this includes never blaspheming his God, honouring his master, being humble toward all, mocking or slandering noone, never lying and bring reconciliation to the quarrelling. Further, the lover should pursue no one he is unwilling to marry, his love must refuse nothing and must be jealously guarded, kept secret and persevere through difficulties. True nobility is that of morals and manners and not of high birth. In this vision, true love refines men and women and obstacles spur them on to greater valor. Women were the ‘judges’ in a ‘love court’ as men auditioned for their hands. The love poetry of the Troubadours is a tradition singing to the perfect and unattainable woman – imaging the Virgin Mary in fairness and purity.

FONTEVRAULT

The double monastery of the order of Fontevrault is a significant one in the 12th Century. In 1119, Pope Calixtus II visited there in person to consecrate the main altar. There were some 300 nuns and 60-70 monks at this time. By the mid century there were 5000 members, and at the head was not an abbot but an abbess. The monks that entered the order owed obedience to her and promised it with their hands in hers.

The founder, Robert d’Arbrissel had willed that an abbess be at the head, and said in the statutes that it should be a widow rather than a virgin. He compared the monks relationship with her to that of St. John with Mary: Behold your mother.

WOMEN AND SOCIAL LIFE – MARRIAGE

Three times the gospel proclaims: “What God has joined, man must not divide” (Lk 16:18, Mt. 5:31-2; 19:3-9). Christianity taught from the beginning that Christ had made marriage a sacrament and would supply the necessary graces for its success. Christianity is the only religion that insists on life-long monogamy. It radically affects and improves the place of women in a society.

St. Paul teaches a radically new relationship between husband and wife: husbands are to lay down their lives for their wives, as Christ sacrificed himself for his bride the Church. The wife must return the gift of self to her husband as the Church does to Christ. His sayings have a reciprocity: For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does, likewise, the husband doesn’t rule over his own body, but the wife does (1 Cor. 7:4)

The Church viewed the Lord’s presence at Cana as a divine elevation of marriage, and the early Fathers conceived Christ’s death on the cross as marital, forming his bride the Church. From the beginning, virginity is honoured, but always on condition that the great good of marriage is not disparaged by the person seeking admittance. Virginity is seen within a marital framework in the Church, and so is the celibacy of the priesthood. The Gnostic shunning of marriage and the physical components involved is long condemned by the Church. For the Christian, marriage is between two equals, bringing duties and responsibilities toward the other.

We can compare this to the situation in the ancient world where the father had rights over the daughters’ life, and adultery had to be punished by the death of the woman, while the man went largely unpunished.

Church councils guarded against incest, which here meant the marriage of those who were distantly related (eg. A second or third cousin). Consent of father or mother was dispensed with by the Church. What was needed was their free mutual consent, as the spouses themselves ministered the sacrament. Some of this was eroded in the 16th Century as the ancient Roman world was modeled. In some places, laws were introduced to insist on parental permission for marriage. In 1556, Henry II gave parents the right to disinherit their children if they married without their consent. During the 17th Century, it became effectively obligatory for the wife to take the husband’s name, whereas in the Middle Ages, either one might be adopted. Though many marriages in the Middle Ages were still arranged from when the children were infants, especially among the richer classes, the Church was the force for ensuring the freedom of the consent, and allowed many nullities of contract were permitted in canon law. The contrast is clear when comparing the practice in Moslem lands today.

POLITICAL POWER

In feudal times, the crowning of the Queen was carried out in the same manner as the crowning of the King, that is, at the hands of the Archbishop in the Cathedral. She would exercise the power of ruling when her husband was sick, absent or dead, as in the case of Elanor of Aquitaine and Blanche of Castile, who really dominated their own centuries. Blanche of Castile arrived at the siege of the castle of Belleme in 1229 and realized that the army was literally paralyzed with cold. She commanded that wood be cut from the forest to warm them up, which greatly boosted morale. They soon ended a siege that had dragged on for weeks.

In Belgium, almost every principality was governed by a woman at some point in the Middle Ages. At the time of the 100 years war in France, the King’s role as head of defenses assumed more importance and the crowning of the King became more of a military action. By the 17th century, the Queen literally disappeared from the scene in favor of the ‘favourite’. Women had a background role after that and weren’t considered capable of ruling or administering property. In the Middle Ages, property of barons would pass to women or to men depending on circumstances. In a study made in France for the years 1152-1284, of 279 fiefs, 104 are owned by lords, 48 by ‘ladies’, 10 by ‘damsels’and the others by squires and various others. Joan of Arc could have emerged no later than the end of the Middle Ages to have the audience and following that she gained. Even as the military leader, she didn’t lose her femininity – and had great motherly concern for the well being of soldiers before the battles! In the country rather than the cities, women had more of an equal footing with men, as land administrators etc. They didn’t tend to be mayors or counselors in cities, though they did have voting rights.

Phillip the Fair in the late 14th century was the first to limit the powers of the Queen, and he exluded women from succession to the throne. He was greatly influenced by the Southern French jurists who had excitingly rediscovered and studied ancient Roman law. This law was really for the military, merchants and functionaries and gave land owners the power to use and abuse their property. This was in contrast to customary law in the Middle Ages, but it suited well the wealthy and those who wanted to centralize power and so became a great temptation in the later Middle Ages. It is the seeds of a centralized and even colonist mindset that would come to the fore in the later centuries. Emperor Frederick II made it common law in Germany, suiting his centralist tendencies.

The effect of Roman law can be seen in changes that took place affecting marriage: In the Middle Ages, the age of consent for women was 12 and 14 for boys. It was changed in the 17th century to be the same as in Roman law, ie 25. In Roman law, the father had the rights to determine the procedure in any case. In Medieval times, if a couple died without heirs, what was from the father’s family would return to them, and what was from the mother’s family would return to them. This too was eroded.

Through the monasteries, women could be great land owners and administrators, equivalent to feudal lords – for example Heloise (who herself was very well educated and taught Greek and Latin). The general imposition of the cloister on all convents of nuns at the end of the Middle Ages and the fact that the new universities only allowed men, led to the eventual loss of the status of convents as centres of learning. By the 16th century, the King took for himself the authority to appoint abbesses and the great centre of Fontevrault became a dumping ground for his old mistresses. Most of the monasteries of women declined, some were saved by reformers, such as Carmel and the Poor Clares.

Every day life can be gauged by what is in the records of town statutes, legal documents, or in a special case, the inquiries of King Louis, who sought to get the response of the common people and remedy their complaints. There we see little facts that build a picture of the place of women in the Middle Ages: women were hairdressers, salt millers, farmers and even Crusaders. They voted like men in rural assemblies and parishes. Women could also open shops, begin trades, without their husband’s authorization. The tax roll of Paris at the end of the 13th century shows that there were women school mistresses, doctors, plasterers, dyers, copyists, miniaturists, binders and so on.

Yet in 1593, women were excluded from all state functions. In the Napoleanic Code she was not even mistress of her own property, but played a subordinate role. From then, only men would compose educational treatises, etc.

The reaction in our own time is for a feminism that is content to seek after what is ‘masculine’ and to make inroads into what is perceived to be all ‘masculine domains’. It is enough to imitate men, being judged equal in the same trades, behaviour, dress, attitudes, etc. Some will ignorantly trumpet the idea that women have finally left the Middle Ages. Yet there is a long way to go before the true genius of women is manifest and celebrated in the modern age, as it was in so many aspects in the Middle Ages, after the gains of Christianity had transformed the ancient world. Modern feminism is suicidal in its core – it is revolted by the feminine. The loss of the feminine is the loss of the greatest treasure of God’s design – for it is the loss of the receptivity to God’s covenant with creation. The middle ages had lifted women from the status of objects in the ancient world, to stand next to men in a delicate complementarity that empowered both to be what they are. The loss of the feminine results in the loss of the truly masculine – for each is completed by the other. The crisis of a neutered humanity is most acutely felt in our day.

The 20th Century was the age of totalitarian regimes, where a univocal oneness was attempted to be enforced. Our own time suffers greatly from the collapse of the family and of the care to provide a stable and loving home where the children are educated first of all in love and secondarily in the skills to lead them to love to the full. The time has come for women to again discover their originality – their feminine genius. It is the time for an authentic feminism that safeguards what women have a genius to safeguard – the concrete, the particular, the heart and the home that is more than a mere house. It is urgently required that women reject the rejection of motherhood and femininity that is embodied in contraception, sterilization and worst of all, abortion. The woman must crush the head of this serpent, not the head of her own child at the request of the serpent.

The great guarantee of the celebration of the genius of woman is the devotion to the Virgin Mother Mary – so important in the middle ages and so neglected in the parts of the world where an unhealthy anti-mother feminism has taken hold. Mary, greatest of creatures, beautiful one, full of love, the true power of God, pray for us – most blessed among all women, pray for women to be truly blessed in their authentic identity.

Related Link: The Early Church ~ Being Frank

Other reading : The Interior Design of Sex and the City Reflects a Culture in Ruins
Contraception and the Catholic Vision
The Moral and Social Influence of Devotion to Mary