Woman, Church & State. Gage Matilda Joslyn

220

“Owing to the pope’s refusal to accept the gifts of the king and queen of Italy on the occasion of his jubilee, all the members of the House of Savoy, including the Duke d’Aosta and the Princess Clotilde, have omitted to send offerings. This is the fly in the jubilee ointment of Pope Leo XIII., and settles the question of concessions of temporal power. Nevertheless, the day is passed when the claim of ‘imprisonment in the Vatican’ will further avail the pope.”

221

When Linnaeus published his sexual system of plants, in the eighteenth century, he was ridiculed and shunned as one who had degraded nature.

222

In the dominion of the Count de Foix, the lord had right once in his lifetime to take, without payment, a certain quantity of goods from the stores of each tenant. Cesar Cantu. —Histoire Universelle.

223

Two women seized by German soldiers were covered with tar, rolled in feathers, and exhibited in the camp as a new species of bird.

224

Among the privileges always claimed, and frequently enforced by the feudalry, was the custom of the lord of the manor to lie the first night with the bride of his tenant. —Sketches of Feudalism, p. 109.

By the law of “Marquette” under the feudal system (which rested on personal vassalage), to the “lord of the soil” belonged the privilege of first entering the nuptial couch unless the husband had previously paid a small sum of money, or its equivalent, for the ransom of his bride; and we read that these feudal lords thought it was no worse thus to levy on a young bride than to demand half the wool of each flock of sheep. Article on Relation of the Sexes. – Westminster Review.

225

The custom of Borough-English is said to have arisen out of the Marchetta or plebeian’s first born son being considered his lord’s progeny. —Dr. Tusler.

226

“It is not very likely that Louis XIV thought the time would ever come when the peasant’s bride might not be claimed in the chamber of his seigneur on her bridal night. Those base laws, their revocation has been written in the blood of successive generations.”

227

See Feudal Dictionary.

228

The interests of ecclesiastics as feudal nobles were in some respects identical with those of the barons, but the clergy also constituted a party with interests of its own.

229

M. Gerun, as quoted by Grimm, gives curious information upon this subject.

230

Par example, dans quelques seigneuries, où le seigneur passent trois nuits avec les nouvelles marriees, il fut convenu qu’il n’en passant qu’une. Dans d’autres, ou le seigneur avant le premiere nuit seulment, on ne lui accordes plus qu’une heure.

231

Collins de Plancy.

232

Feudal Dictionary, p. 179.

233

Claiming the right of the first night with each new spouse. —Boems Decisions 297, I-17.

234

Raepsaet, p. 179.

235

The popes anciently had universal power over the pleasures of marriage. —Feudal Dictionary, 174.

236

In the transaction the alternative was with the husband; it was he who might submit, or pay the fine, as he preferred or could afford. Relation of the Sexes.– Westminster Review.

237

These (courts) powerfully assisted the seigneur to enforce his traditional privileges at the expense of the villeins. —H. S. Maine.

238

Sometimes the contumacious husband was harnessed by the side of a horse or an ox, compelled to do a brute’s work and to herd with the cattle.

239

He is followed by bursts of laughter, and the noisy rabble down to the lowest scullion give chase to the “cuckold.” —Michelet.

240

The oldest born of the peasant is accounted the son of his lord, for he, perchance it was, that begat him. When the guests have retired, the newly wedded husband shall permit his lord to enter the bed of his wife, unless he shall have redeemed her for five shillings and four pence. —Grimm.

241

Droit de cuissage c’est le droit de mettre une cuisse dans le lit d’une autre, ou de coucher avec le femme d’une vassal ou d’une serf.

So much scandal was caused that finally the archbishop of Bourges abolished this right in his diocese. —Feudal Dictionary.

242

A yoke of cattle and a measure of wheat was afterwards substituted for a money ransom, but even this redemption was in most cases entirely beyond the power of the serf.

Under the feudal system the lord of the manor held unlimited sway over his serfs. He farther possessed the so-called Jus Primae Noctis (Right of the First Night), which he could, however, relinquish in virtue of a certain payment, the name of which betrayed its nature. It has been latterly asserted that this right never existed, an assertion which to me appears entirely unfounded. It is clear the right was not a written one, that it was not summed up in paragraphs; it was the natural consequence of the dependent relationship, and required no registration in any book of law. If the female serf pleased the lord he enjoyed her, if not he let her alone. In Hungary, Transylvania, and the Danubian principalities, there was no written Jus Primae Noctis either, but one learns enough of this subject by inquiry of those who know the country and its inhabitants, as to the manners which prevail between the land owners and the female population. That imposts of this nature existed cannot be denied, and the names speak for themselves. August Bebel. —Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

243

In a parish outside Bourges the parson as being a lord especially claimed the first fruits of the bride, but was willing to sell his rights to the husband.

244

The infamous noble who accompanied a certain notorious actress to this country in the fall of 1886, possessed forty livings in his gift.

245

No greater proof of this statement is needed than the rapidity with which the disease brought by the sailors of Columbus spread over Europe; infecting the king on his throne, the peasant in the field, the priest at the altar, the monk and nun in the cloister.

246

In deference to that public sentiment which required the ruler to pose before the world as a libertine, Friedrich Wilhelm I., of Prussia (1713-1740), although old and in feeble health, kept up the pretense of a liason with the wife of one of his generals, the intimacy consisting of an hour’s daily walk in the castle yard. —August Bebel.

247

Down to Pius IX. See The Woman, the Priest and the Confessional.

248

When the Emperor Charles II entered Bourges, he was saluted by a deputation of perfectly naked women. At the entrance of King Ladislaus into Vienna, 1452, the municipal government sent a deputation of public women to meet him the beauty of whose forms was rather enhanced than concealed by their covering of gauze. Such cases were by no means unusual. —Woman in the Past, Present and Future.

249

Memoirs of the Princess of Bareith, a sister of Frederick the Great.

250

In Russia the nobles have such rights by law