Chapter 5

Once it came to the hearing of this gentle apostle of development, that she had been said to represent a cult. The occasion was a reception given in her honor by one of her clubs on her seventieth birthday. There had been speeches and congratulations, and the scene was one of general rejoicing. "Oh, she is the leader of a cult," whispered a guest, and the remark was repeated to Mrs. Croly. She received it with a sorry smile of regret that any one should so misinterpret the significance of the scene. As if the narrow and exclusive word "cult" could be applied to an assembly that stood for organization and human development, which, in her prophetic vision, only needed time to unite races, and ultimately to extend around the globe. To her it signified "the opening of the door, the stepping out into the freedom of the outer air, and the sweet sense of fellowship with the whole universe, that comes with liberty and light."

Few women carry their enthusiasm till past three-score-and-ten, as Mrs. Croly did. With the failing of physical strength the wand of power passed into the hands of younger women whom she hailed as her successors, and whose growth and development were the blossoms springing from the seed she herself had planted; and in the last years of her noble life, when the glow of sunset was on the garden of her activities, the love she bore her fellow-women was her unfailing joy and inspiration.

At the time of life when people recognize the fact that their forces are waning, and that a well-earned period of rest has arrived, Mrs. Croly set for herself the last task of her busy life. She felt she had something to tell about the success of her great idea, her message to women, and she wrote the "History of the Woman's Club Movement in America," a volume containing eleven hundred and eighty pages, which told the story of nearly all the clubs in the General Federation. This book will remain a monument to the founder of women's clubs. Into it she put the skill and experience of her long years of editorship, urging every faculty to the work, and applying herself with a degree of industry that characterized the zeal of her best working years. And it testifies to the martyr-like nature of her spirit, that she even rallied from the disappointment consequent upon the financial failure of the book. The dedication of the work reads as follows: "This book has been a labor of love, and it is lovingly dedicated to the Twentieth Century Woman by one who has seen and shared in the struggles of the Woman of the Nineteenth Century." But nothing that is good is lost, and the book testifies to the illimitable ideas, the trust in eternal goodness, and the strength of purpose of one who had a glorified estimate of latent feminine forces that require to be developed.

Essays and Addresses by Jane Cunningham Croly

Beginnings of Organization[1]

Women in Religious Organization

When the history of the Nineteenth Century comes to be written, women will appear for the first time in the history of the world as organizers, and leaders of great organized movements among their own sex.

[Footnote 1: _History of the Woman's Club Movement in America._]

The world of to-day, both for men and women, is a different world from that which furnished the outlook for the men and women of a hundred years ago. Science, invention, have changed its material aspects; and while retiring some individual activities and occupations, they have created new fields of industry that are rapidly changing the face of the world, and making new demands upon strength and energy.

The world which man has conquered, and is still conquering, is no longer the purely physical. He is working now toward the discovery and control of the powers of the air, and has already harnessed some of them to do his bidding. The succession of great events and discoveries will mark this century as an epoch in the world's history, and is responsible for economic changes which create social disturbance, and to which both men and women must adjust themselves, often without knowing the why or wherefore of that which is so different from what has been. It is one of the paradoxes in human nature that women, while being made responsible for human conditions, have been condemned to individual isolation. It has been largely the result of general physical differentiation and the dependence that grew out of it, and, secondarily, the long ages required to produce settled social conditions and a reversal of that great unwritten law of kings and men--that might made right.

It is true that there was a time, some traditions of which are still preserved among the Indian tribes of North America, when the woman possessed controlling influence and power. This matriarchal or mother age passed with the primitive period in which the energies of men were absorbed in hunting and fighting. It was a tribal effort through tribal women to formulate and give importance to family life, and it must have been accepted and more or less sanctioned by the men. This tribal leadership, at first domestic and social, disappeared with the development of military leaders, the acquisition of military powers, and the centralization of property in lands, houses, and personal belongings, that required constant and effective methods of protection and defence.

Instances are not wanting of heroic women of those early days who were capable of holding and defending person and property against aggression and warfare. But the logic of events was strong then, as now, and the destiny of the woman was not that of military supremacy.

The first step in associated life taken by women was a simple protest against the use and abuse of power on the part of men, wrought up by fear or loathing to the point of desperation. Women, usually of rank, fled to the desert with one or two companions, and encountered unheard-of hardships rather than submit to the fate to which they had been condemned by father, brother, or some other man who could exercise authority over them. The first Church-sisterhood grew out of such beginnings, and gradually obtained the sanction of the Church. A recent remarkable work, "Women in Monasticism," shows how wide and powerful the system of religious sisterhoods had become as early as the fifth century, and traces its growing strength and enlargement until its decline, which was coeval with the Reformation.

The strength of this extraordinary development lay in the fact that it furnished women with a vocation; it gave employment to faculty. The sisterhoods of the convents and monasteries were the nurses, the teachers, the students, the caretakers of the poor, and the guardians of the orphaned rich. The Fathers of the Church--St. Jerome, St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine--all bear witness to the high character of these sisterhoods and to their individual members, to their virtues and lives of self-sacrificing devotion. Many of these women became learned by the exercise of memory alone, for they had no books. Many enriched their convents with manuscript books--the result of lives of painstaking labor. The Beguines, who founded hospitals and schools, were the best educated women of their day--the eleventh century. They read Tacitus and Virgil in the original, and were skilled in medicine. Disease often took loathsome forms, and only women whose lives were consecrated to self-denying labor could have been the patient ministers to the diseased poor.

This is all the more noteworthy because the idea of vocation was not the early incentive to monastic life. It was sought as a refuge; it developed into a vocation; and it is a matter of interest to women to-day that these spontaneous vocations, growing out of an enforced life, were inspired by love of well-doing, desire for study, the acquisition of knowledge, its distribution, and the ever-ready spirit of helpfulness at the sacrifice of every personal indulgence.

Naturally the monastic life of women was controlled by the Church, and could have continued to exist only by permission. A Spanish lady of rank who had befriended Ignatius Loyola as a young student of Barcelona, attracted by the odor of sanctity and scholarship which attached itself to the Order which he founded, gained reluctant permission to establish (1545) an Order of Jesuitesses, subject to the same strict rules and discipline. This was the beginning of a strictly woman's Jesuit "college," which flourished notwithstanding all the efforts Loyola himself made to get rid of it, and the restrictions put upon it. Many noble ladies joined it, and it became the foundation of a number of houses of the same name and character, extending into Flanders and England, when, without cause, except fear perhaps of their extent and influence, they were finally suppressed by a bull of Pope Urban VIII, bearing date, January 13, 1630. This Order of Jesuitesses existed for nearly a century. Their colleges were scholastic, and had given rise to preparatory schools, when they were summarily suppressed because of their independent life.

Had this Order continued to exist it might have gained an educational ascendency throughout Europe which even the strong wave of the Reformation would have found it hard to overcome. But the convents and monasteries generally suffered at this time from the abuses which had crept into the Church, and the rage for power which possessed its prelates.

The influence was mischievous also from a social and domestic point of view; from the sanctity and superiority attached to those who ignored natural ties and duties, thus lowering the social and domestic standard, and setting the nun's habit above the woman, the wife and the mother. Yet nature had asserted itself even in the convent. The motherhood in the monastic woman made her the mother, the caretaker, the nurse, the teacher, and the helper of all those who needed maternal care, while condemning and ignoring its common aspects and place in everyday life.

This absence of domestic ties was not, however, obligatory upon all sisterhoods. An interesting story of the "First Council of Women," told by Madame Lendier at the Congress of Women in Paris in 1889, bears upon this point.

The monastic school out of which the Council grew, was founded in the early part of the seventh century, by Iduberge, wife of Pepin, mayor under the Frankish kings.

Iduberge cleared a space in the forest, and built a house for the education and religious consecration (if they desired it) of the daughters of nobles, her daughter Gertrude becoming the abbess. No vow of celibacy was imposed. As long as they remained in the abbey they were to conform to the rules of the house, but if they desired to marry they were free to leave. The _chanoinesses_ of Nivelle spent their morning in religious duties, but the rest of the day they were at liberty to mix with the outer world. The abbess alone took upon herself the vow of perpetual virginity. A hundred and seventy passed away after the death of Gertrude. The abbey had grown in power, had gathered around itself a town with gates and towers and fortifications, but was independent of the French Government, being under the sole rule of the abbess, who was called the "Princess."

This independence excited the jealousy of the Church, and in May, 820, Nivelle received a visit from Valcand, the reigning bishop of Liège. He was received by the lady abbess in the habit of her order, a cross of gold in her hand; mounted on a white horse she rode at the head of the procession that marched to meet him. Young girls of noble birth, clad in long white gowns trimmed with ermine, and mounted on palfreys, followed their abbess, and behind them the town authorities, feudal lords and administrators of justice.

At the same time Valcand entered the town with every honor and courtesy due to his rank. He held a solemn service, and having given the benediction, he rose again and addressed the _chanoinesses_. He declared that it had been decided by the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle that he should be sent to Nivelle to enforce the rules of St. Benoit, which must be followed by all religious bodies; this rule being that all the devotees of Nivelle were required to take upon themselves the vow of perpetual virginity, to acknowledge themselves dependent upon their bishop in all secular matters, and finally to yield up to Valcand all temporal power at Nivelle.

This solemn declaration was received in silence. For some moments no one moved or spoke, but a low murmur swept over the young sisters of Nivelle Abbey. The lady abbess, followed by her _chanoinesses_, rose and advanced to the rails of the choir stand. The abbess Hiltrude, daughter of Lyderic II, sovereign of Flanders under the emperor, then between thirty-five and forty years of age, was beautiful; of that calm, grave type which speaks of a quiet, well-regulated life.

"In the name of the Cloister of St. Gertrude," she said, "we protest against any interference in the temporal power of this government. We claim the right of taking to ourselves husbands when it seems right to us so to do. We are therefore resolved to follow the rules of our patron saint, as we always have done heretofore, and if this protest is insufficient we will present our appeal to our Holy Father, the Pope."

The bishop declared that he would maintain the rule given by the Council at Aix, and then descending from the pulpit, he ordered his people to follow him at once out of Nivelle, refusing to join in any of the festivities prepared in his honor.

Hiltrude now took things seriously into her own hands, leaving nothing undone to secure the success of her appeal. She sent a courier to the Pope, and another to Louis le Debonaire; but the wise abbess took yet further precautions: she at once organized a council at Nivelle of all the abbesses of the French Empire, requiring silence from them, and assuring them of security in the town. The council could not be brought together for a year, but on the 1st of May, 821, Hiltrude inaugurated her "Concile de Femmes."

She took advantage of the marriage of Count d'Albion with Regina, which was to take place at the abbey. Regina was a _chanoinesse_, and it was the custom when a member of the circle at the abbey married, that the marriage should be solemnized at Nivelle. Fifteen titled abbesses, all of aristocratic lineage, arrived with imposing suites. The council was a short one. They approved of all that Hiltrude had done, and signed the appeal. The document, written, signed, and sealed by all the abbesses present, was immediately sent to Rome, and to Valcand himself. Meantime the pope and the king, who were much perplexed, and the bishop, who was completely baffled by the logic, strength and force of appeal of the "Concile," were obliged to withdraw the opposition, and the _chanoinesses_ were left in peace to marry or not to marry, as they pleased.

The ancient order of deaconesses imposed no vow, yet it was co-existent with the early church, and accepted by many of the fathers as part of the apostolic order. This position was strengthened by the high character of the women, many of them widows, or unprotected women, whom death or some other calamity had freed from natural ties.

Ancient church history is full of the records of courage, devotion, and self-sacrifice on the part of these women, who were generally of high birth, but gave themselves to poverty and the most menial offices, and left names which have perpetuated the sanctity of their order, and come down to the present day as types of good women.

The ceremonies used in the ordination of a deaconess were precisely the same as those used for a deacon. The deaconesses were not cloistered: they lived at home with children or relatives. But they wore a distinctive dress, and had their place in the church with the clergy. The "golden age" of the order is said to have been immediately following the apostolic era, before the spirit of monasticism had destroyed or limited activities, and shut off sympathy with the outside world.

The royal and imperial order of the Hadraschin in Prague, Germany, is the most imposing relic remaining of the religious orders of women, though not the most numerous. There are about forty chapters still in existence of this ancient order, with a royal residence at Prague. The abbess possessed the right to crown the queen at coronation ceremonies, and exercised it as late as 1836, wearing all the magnificent insignia of her rank in the order.

A more numerous order of consecrated women, presided over and governed by one "mother-general," is that of St. Joseph de Cluny. This was founded by a woman, Madame Javonbey, in the beginning of the present century, about ninety years ago. It has one hundred and twenty-eight houses in France, and two in the United States. It has others in South America, one in Italy, several in the West Indies and some in Africa.

All its property is in community, and its membership--about six thousand women--teach in its schools, and care for the sick poor in hospitals and in their homes. Two hundred are assigned to the care of the insane, by the French Government.

The mother-general administers, from the mother-house _(maison mère)_ at Paris. She has two assistants and a council of six sisters. Under the mother-general there are mother-superiors, one to each estate, administering and governing it, but under this mother-superior at Paris. These lesser governing women send in weekly reports to the home convent at Paris, giving brief accounts of transactions and events, such as the entrance of pupils, the purchase of lands, and extra dole of food to the poor, the death of a member and the like. They are a prosperous, working sisterhood, and have preserved the integrity and independence of their beginning.

It was the spirit of protest against church and monastic abuses, embodied in Martin Luther, which broke up the monastic system for both men and women. Doubtless also it had outlived its usefulness in any large or general sense. A more settled social and domestic life was becoming possible through the development of trades and industries, while the domestic virtues in women began to acquire a value, and furnish guarantees to the State.

The discovery of printing gave a tremendous impulse to the spread of civilizing and educational influences, to the multiplication of schools, and the desire for knowledge. It was the dawn of intellectual freedom, and the school of the people was the open door for it.

Spiritual freedom had to wait longer. It waited the unfolding of the woman. At the beginning of this century she was still under the dominion of the church and its leaders, and her efforts were controlled by sects and doctrines.

The first associated work of women in this country, and in this century, was still religious and philanthropic. The "Sisters of Charity" in America owes its origin to a young and beautiful New York woman, Elizabeth Seton, who was born in 1774, married at twenty, but lost her husband by death in a very few years. Obliged to support herself, she opened a school in Baltimore. But her tendency was toward the devoted life of a _religieuse_, and the gift of a foundation fund enabled her to gratify this strong desire. She assumed the conventual habit, and opened a convent school on July 30, 1809, in Emmetsburg, of which she became mother-superior. The character of "Mother" Seton was considered saintly by Protestants and Roman Catholics alike. She died at her post in 1821, after a life the last half of which was entirely spent in self-denying work. Mrs. Seton was exceedingly lovely as a young woman; and her sweet, serene face and presence, as she grew older, was said to exert a magical influence upon all who came in contact with her. This was particularly seen in her care of the sick, and in dealing with turbulent spirits: they came immediately under her influence without any effort on her part.

The first ten years of the present century saw the beginning of a number of religious societies of women, organized to create funds, and aid in church mission work. First among these were the "cent" societies, 1801 and 1804, and later the Woman's Auxiliaries to the Board of Foreign Missions. These grew in size and strength, until in 1839 there were six hundred and eighty-eight of these societies. But, unfortunately, their limited and purely subjective character afforded small basis for the wider growth necessary to perpetuity, and they gradually declined, until in 1860 they had become nearly extinct.

A little later, 1864, the first independent "Union" of women missionary workers was formed in New York by Mrs. Doremus, and within a few years every denomination, beginning with the Congregationalists, had its organized Woman's Auxiliary to the American Board of Home and Foreign Missions. The "Missionary Union" remains, however, the only independent society of women workers in this field, managing its own affairs, raising its own funds, and sending out its own missionaries, both men and women. Its very existence has been a great strength to the Woman's Auxiliaries, stimulating them to independent action, and especially to the demand for a voice in the disposal of the large sums they raise and turn over to the treasury of the American Board.

The oldest purely women-societies in this country were also started for missionary and church work. The first is the "Female Charitable Society" of Baldwinsville, N.J., and is still existent.

The object of the Baldwinsville society, as stated in the constitution, was "to obtain a more perfect view on the infinite excellence of the Christian religion in its own nature, the importance of making this religion the chief concern of our hearts, the necessity of promoting it in our families, and of diffusing it among our fellow sinners." A further object is "to afford aid to religious institutions, and for the carrying out of this purpose a contribution of twelve and a half cents is required at every quarterly meeting."

Mrs. Jane Hamill presided at its first meeting; the Rev. John Davenport opened it with prayer. Mrs. Hamill was still the presiding officer at its jubilee anniversary in 1867. At its seventy-eighth annual meeting Mrs. Payn Bigelow was elected president.

The "Piqua (Ohio) Female Bible Society" was founded in 1818. It consisted at first of nine women. In those early days the country was a wilderness. Other members were added later. It has had in all, over nine hundred members. Mrs. Elizabeth Pettit was its presiding officer from 1840 until 1881--forty-one years. The daughters and the granddaughters are all made members by right of inheritance, and in several instances four generations have been represented at one time. It held its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1893, when all the descendants of the early members were notified, and many were present. It has held a meeting on the first Monday afternoon of each month for seventy-eight years, and the records are preserved intact. The founder was Mrs. Rachael Johnston, wife of the Indian agent. It has sent over fifteen thousand dollars to the parent Bible Society in New York.

It should be remembered that down to the last quarter of the present century, there was little sympathy with organizations of women, not expressly religious, charitable, or intended to promote charitable objects. "What is the object?" was the first question asked of any organization of women, and if it was not the making of garments, or the collection of funds for a church or philanthropic purpose, it was considered unworthy of attention, or injurious doubts were thrown upon its motives. In Germany, even yet, societies of women are not permitted, except such as have a distinctly religious, educational or charitable object.

The Moral Awakening[1]