Woman, Church & State. Gage Matilda Joslyn
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.122 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 herself123 and the punishment due to both was made to fall on the woman alone.124 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.125 Upon coming to the throne, Justinian126 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,127 and is in existence at the present time, both civil codes and statue laws enforcing this great wrong of the Church.128 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.129 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.130 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.131 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.132
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;133 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
Cardinal Otto decreed that wives and children of priests should have no benefit from the estate of the husband and father; such estates should be vested in the church.
In 1396 Charles VI forbade that the testimony of women should be received in any of the courts of his kingdom.
The council of Tivoli, in the Soisonnais, 909, in which twelve bishops took part, promulgated a Canon requiring the oath of seven witnesses to convict a priest with having lived with a woman; if these failed of clearing him he could do so by his own oath.
Though the clergy now and then made use both of the Justinian and Theodosian Codes, the former body of law, as such, was notwithstanding from the reign of the Emperor Justinian, or about the year of our Lord 560, till the beginning of the 12th century, or the year of Christ, 1230 or thereabouts, of no force in the west in matter of government. Seldon. —
The codification of the laws under Justinian were largely due to his wife the Empress Theodosia, who having risen from the lowest condition in the empire, that of a circus performer, to the throne of the East, proved herself capable in every way of adorning that high position.
By the Code Napoleon, all research into paternity is forbidden. The Christian Church was swamped by hysteria from the third to the sixteenth century. Canon Charles Kingsley. —
Although under law the entire property of the wife became that of the husband upon marriage.
A treatise on Chastity, attributed to Pope Sixtus III., barely admits that married people can secure eternal life, though stating that the glory of heaven is not for them.
The Romish religion teaches that if you omit to name anything in confession, however repugnant or revolting to purity which you even doubt having committed, your subsequent confessions are thus rendered null and sacrilegious. Chiniquy. —
Disraeli, who is most excellent authority, declared the early English edition of the Bible contained 6,000 errors, which were constantly introduced and passages interpolated for sectarian purposes or to sustain new creeds; sometimes, indeed, they were added for the purpose of destroying all scriptural authority by the use of texts.
The revisors of the New Testament found 150,000 errors, interpolations, additions and false translations in the King James or common version.
Cardinal Wolsey complained to the Pope that both the secular and regular priests were in the habit of committing actions for which if not in orders, they would have been promptly executed.
The claim of direct inspiration from God exists equally among Protestants as among Catholics, and even among the Unitarians, who deny Christ’s divinity. A notable instance of this kind, both because of the high scientific and moral character of the clergyman, took place in the pulpit of the May Memorial Church, Syracuse, N.Y., December 4th, 1887, as reported in the Morning Standard of the 5th.
Luther declared that priests believed themselves to be as superior to the laity in general as males were held superior to females.
The legal wife of a priest was termed “An Unhallowed Thing,” while mistresses and concubines were known as “The Hallowed Ones,” “The Honored Ones.” In parts of France, especially in Paris, the latter epithet was common as applied to a priest’s mistress. —