CHAPTER VI.

THE CHURCH AS A SOCIAL FACTOR.

Influence of the Church on women in social life--The twofold conception of womanhood--Canon and Civil Law--Effect of ecclesiastical celibacy.

It has come to be regarded almost as truism that women are more religious than men, that they are, by nature, more devout, more susceptible to spiritual influences. If Matthew Arnold’s definition of religion as “morality touched by emotion” be accepted, it is easy to point to the larger development of the emotional nature in women as a cause for their greater leaning towards religion. But for the present purpose it is only necessary to deal with the manifestations of this impulse; the causes belong to the domain of psychology.

Before considering women’s part in the religious life of the country, it has to be remembered that their part in social life has been largely determined by the Church. For centuries the Church was, practically, the only civilizing influence, the only restraint upon passion and lawlessness, the only protection of the weak against the strong. It was the Church that taught respect for womanhood, that raised the wife from a state of subjection amounting to slavery to a position of dignity in the household. It was in the Church that women sought safety, shelter, protection, livelihood, occupation, when the home was gone, when kindred failed, when life and honour were at stake. The supremacy which the Church exercised over the laity in general was emphasized in the case of women, more prone to render unquestioning obedience to constituted authority.

From the beginning the Church was quick to recognize the value of women’s adherence, and the importance of the services which they could render. By raising women, the Church created a power for its own uses. And women were as quick to respond. They gave themselves freely. Whatever the Church has done for women has been repaid by them tenfold. Their labour, their property, their lives were placed at the disposal of the Church. They gave something more--their freedom of thought, their independence of action. Their minds, as well as their consciences, were in the keeping of the priest.

The Church, while with one hand it raised woman from the abasement into which she had been cast by Paganism, lowered her with the other. When it taught men to pay respect to their wives, when it interfered with the tyranny which placed women in complete subjection to their male relatives, it was that women might come directly under the priestly power. The Church had no intention of setting women free to act independently. It was only a change of masters. This was seen especially about the fourth century, when the clergy had begun to degenerate from their former simplicity.

“Then the men, exiling the women by degrees, took the sole government of the church into their own hands, and assembling together, made what canons they pleased for their own secular advantage. Then were some published against the ordination of priestesses, deaconesses, etc.”[30]

The same thing is observable in the next century.

“Women in most places were denied all ecclesiastical offices, and commanded to be silent in the churches, and so it continued for several centuries even till the ancient faith began to bud forth again (after that great night of apostacy) among the Waldenses, who justified women’s preaching.”

The Church was careful to impress women with a sense of their inferiority. It has even been denied that Christianity--or rather its exponents--did anything to elevate women to a higher social status.

“Das Christenthum brachte der Frau keine Erlösung aus ihrer Erniedrigung. Im Gegentheil! War sie in der heidnischen Welt nur die Sklavin, die Waare, das Hausthier gewesen, so wurde sie jetzt noch ausserdem zum ‘Gefäss der Hölle’ erklärt.”[31]

This remark is borne out by Tertullian’s apostrophe--

“Woman! thou oughtest always to walk in mourning and rags, thine eyes filled with tears of repentance, to make men forget that thou hast been the destruction of the race. Woman, thou art the gate of hell.”

A curious contradiction appears in theological teaching. It is difficult to reconcile the conception of womanhood which found its expression in Mariolatry with that which was given voice to by the Fathers, which proclaimed woman unfit to receive the Eucharist in her naked hands, which forbade her to approach the altar,[32] which taught that she was a temptation in man’s way to try him, which regarded the married state as a condition of sin, and even among the laity exalted virginity and celibacy as a species of sainthood. In a treatise on chastity attributed to Sixtus III., married people are said to risk, though not entirely to forfeit, eternal happiness. St. Martin of Tours considered marriage pardonable, but virginity glorious. St. Jerome spoke of marriage as at best a vice: “All that we can do is to excuse and purify it.” Tertullian was much stronger: “Celibacy,” he wrote, “must be chosen, though the human race perish in consequence.”

The higher conception of womanhood was an ideal only, a theme for poets, a dream of saints; the lower conception was the guide for common life, the basis of everyday teaching. It was this lower conception which, in different ways, determined women’s position in society. Gradually the precepts of the canon law found their way into common law, and the subordination enforced upon women in matters spiritual was extended to matters temporal. The supremacy which canon law obtained is easily accounted for when we compare the disciplined character of all ecclesiastical as compared with lay government, the training of the priest with that of the noble, the ignorance pervading all classes, and the rude character of the legislation administered in feudal society.

The Roman conquest brought the legislative code of the empire into Britain, but with the advent of Christianity Roman law was gradually coloured by ecclesiastical law, and assumed a different complexion. Some writers go so far as to say that Roman law was entirely superseded. Through the law the Church kept an invisible hold upon the people, and compelled subjugation to its decrees. The Church, however, did not need shelter or excuse for any of its acts. It was powerful enough to command obedience to whatever it chose to decree. There was no influence greater, no authority more dreaded. Its rival, education, was but a puny stripling, without armour or weapons.

In the tenth century we find a repetition of the ecclesiastical law excluding women from certain parts of the church. There is a Saxon constitution which runs--

“We charge that at the time when the priest sings mass no woman be nigh the altar, but that they stand in their own place, and that the mass priest there receive of them what they are willing to offer.”

Women were not suffered to penetrate within the altar precincts in the sixteenth century. It is related that Sir Thomas More’s wife did not sit with her husband in the chancel, but in some other part of the church, in what are described as the common parish seats.

The entrance of women within the Church of Durham was limited to a certain point in the nave marked by a blue cross on the marble pavement, in accordance with the rule of St. Cuthbert. One day in the year 1333, Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., paid a visit to Durham Cathedral, supped with the king in the Prior’s chamber, and retired to rest in the apartment arranged for her husband in the priory. The monks were scandalized, and sought an interview with the king, who bade the queen rise, which she did immediately, and, clad only in her night array, went over from the priory buildings to the castle for the night, beseeching St. Cuthbert’s pardon for having polluted sacred ground with her presence.

Ecclesiastical law affected women very disastrously by the enforcement of priestly celibacy. Although against the rules of the Church, marriage was common among the clergy in pre-Norman times, especially in the north of England. Substantial reasons existed against allowing priests to marry. There were complaints that the married clergy took the Church property to provide marriage portions for their sons and daughters and legacies for their wives, and were generally in the habit of applying ecclesiastical funds to their private uses.

“It is all the worse when they have it all, for they do not dispose of it as they ought, but decorate their wives with what they should the altars, and turn everything to their own worldly pomp.... Let those who before this had the evil custom of decorating their women as they should the altars refrain from this evil custom, and decorate their churches as they best can; then would they command for themselves both divine counsel and worldly worship. A priest’s wife is nothing but a snare of the devil, and he who is ensnared thereby on to his end will be seized fast by the devil.”

In the tenth century, priests were found deserting their wives for other women. No doubt scandals of this kind, and other grave abuses, induced the Winchester Council in 1076 to make a declaration against the marriage of priests. All future marriages were forbidden, but parish priests who were already married were allowed to keep their wives. In the next century severe measures were taken. A Council was convened at London in 1102, when it was decreed that no married priest could celebrate. The controversy on clerical celibacy went on by fits and starts, until the Lateran Council in 1215 definitely pronounced against marriage. Meanwhile the clergy had followed their own instincts, and evaded the ordinances against marriage by taking concubines, like Bishop Nigel of Ely, in the twelfth century. That prelate’s partner was the valiant Maud of Ramsbury, who bravely defended the castle of Devizes against King Stephen, and only capitulated when the enemy, having stolen her son, threatened to hang him before her eyes.

The document entitled, “Instructions for Parish Priests,” composed not later than the middle of the fifteenth century, shows that it was quite common for priests to be married, though the practice was reprobated, and “chastity,” meaning abstinence from wedlock, was enjoined. But those who were too weak to live honestly and uprightly as celibates are told to take a wife. Dr. Jessop states that by the eleventh century country parsons had almost ceased to be married men, though Benedicts were found among them here and there as late as the thirteenth century, when a veto was put upon priests’ marriages.[33] The decrees of provincial councils prove the existence of priestly concubinage down to the sixteenth century.

The worst effects of the celibate system were seen in the sixteenth century. Debauchery was spread throughout the country. As many as one hundred thousand women were ruined by the priests, for whom houses of ill fame were kept.[34] From Carnarvonshire came complaints of the well-to-do laity, that their wives and daughters were not safe from outrage by the priests. Out of their own mouths the clergy are condemned. In 1536 the secular clergy in the diocese of Bangor wrote to Cromwell, that if their women were taken away they would be homeless outcasts.

“We ourselves shall be driven to seek our living at all houses and taverns, for mansions upon the benefices and vicarages we have none. And as for gentlemen and substantial honest men, for fear of inconvenience, and knowing our frailty and accustomed liberty, they will in no wise board us in their houses.”

In this year the Lower House of Convocation presented a memorial inveighing against priestly marriages. But in the reign of Edward VI., what might be called a Permissive Bill was passed for the sufficient reason that “great filthiness of living had followed on the laws that compelled chastity and prohibited marriage.” Under Queen Mary celibacy was again enforced, married priests were ejected from their livings, and even those who renounced their wives were not always secure of their places. Elizabeth had a great aversion to married priests, and openly expressed her contempt for their wives, whom she could not bring herself to receive at Court. But though she demurred a good deal to giving a formal assent to ecclesiastical marriages, the Act of Edward VI. was eventually reinforced, a reaction having set in with the rise of the Protestant party. The Act was hedged round with various restrictions.

“No manner of priest or deacon shall hereafter take to his wife any manner of woman without the advice and allowance first had upon good examination by the bishop of the same diocese and two justices of the peace of the same shire dwelling next to the place where the same woman hath made her most abode before her marriage; not without the good-will of the parents of the said woman, if she have any living, or two of the next of her kinsfolks, or for lack of the knowledge of such, of her master or mistress where she serveth.”

The advantages and disadvantages of celibacy, and the manner of life proper for the married and the unmarried priest, are set forth by George Herbert in his dissertation on the “Country Parson.”

“The country parson, considering that virginity is a higher state than matrimony, and that the ministry requires the best and highest things, is rather unmarried than married. But yet, as the temper of his body may be, or as the temper of his parish may be, where he may have occasion to converse with women, and that among suspicious men, and other like circumstances considered, he is rather married than unmarried.... If he be unmarried, he hath not a woman in his house, but finds opportunities of having his meat dressed and other services done by men-servants at home, and his linen washed abroad. If he be unmarried and sojourn, he never talks with any women alone, but in the audience of others; and that seldom, and then also in a serious manner, never jestingly or sportfully....

“If he be married, the choice of his wife was made rather by his ear than by his eye; his judgment, not his affection, found out a fit wife for him....

“As he is just in all things, so is he to his wife also.... Therefore he gives her respect both afore her servants and others, and half at least of the government of the house, reserving so much of the affairs as serve for a diversion for him; yet never giving over the reins, but that he sometimes looks how things go.”

The ideal wife is thus described:

“Instead of the qualities of the world, he requires only three of her. First, training up of her children and maids in the fear of God; with prayers and catechising and all religious duties. Secondly, a curing and healing of all wounds and sores with her own hands; which skill either she brought with her, or he takes care she shall learn it of some religious neighbour. Thirdly, a providing for her family in some such sort, as that neither they want a competent sustentation, nor her husband be brought into debt.”

In modern times a section of the clergy in the English Church have shown a disposition to revert to the practice of earlier ages, and follow a celibate life. It is part of the ascetic movement which some years ago was rather a marked feature in the Church. But even among those Anglicans who recoil from the term “Protestant,” and endeavour to preserve as much as possible of the forms of Church government which prevailed in pre-Reformation times, there are few comparatively who adopt this species of monasticism.

No doubt marriage has greatly helped to break down the authority of the priest. A man with a wife and family living the domestic life of an ordinary citizen is brought at once to the level of common humanity, priest though he be. He loses that glamour which attached to him when he was cut off from his fellows and set apart on another plane by virtue of his office. Women, more than men, have been in all ages prone to superstitious reverence for ecclesiastical authority. They are still apt to look to the clergyman to guide them in the daily affairs of secular life, not because they consider him better qualified intellectually than other men, but because they have a lurking remnant of belief in priestly infallibility. There are many who make the clergyman a referee on all subjects, of whatever nature, and look upon him as the proper head of every movement, educational, philanthropic, or otherwise, irrespective of his qualifications for such a position. The deference paid to clerical opinion and the leaning on clerical authority are survivals of old habits of thought, weakened in the process of transmission, but having a strong principle of vitality.

The counterbalancing force to the influence of the Church on women is to be found not merely in its acknowledged rivals, intellectual development and the progress of secular knowledge, but in the motive-power of the religious sentiment. It has been justly observed that--

“the clergy of all ages, in concentrating the strength of woman on her religious nature, have summoned up a power that they could not control. When they had once lost the confidence of those ruled by this mighty religious sentiment, it was turned against them. In the Greek and Roman worship women were the most faithful to the altars of the gods; yet when Christianity arose, the foremost martyrs were women. In the Middle Ages women were the best Catholics, but they were afterwards the best Huguenots. It was a woman, not a man, that threw the stool at the offending minister’s head in a Scotch kirk; it was a woman who made the best Quaker martyr on Boston common. And from vixennish Jenny Geddes to high-minded Mary Dyer, the whole range of womanly temperament responds as well to the appeal of religious freedom as of religious slavery.”[35]

A French writer in the middle of the present century, describing England during the Ages of Faith, with its surname of the “Isle of Saints,” as “un spectacle digne des anges,” laments its coldness and lack of virtue under Protestantism. In what he styles this materialistic age--

“la femme est loin, bien loin d’être ce qu’elle fut pour l’opinion publique aux époques de foi vive et ardente.”

The expression of the religious sentiment has taken a different form. It may be less obvious and definite, but in the opinion of one of our modern thinkers it is the mainspring of all progress--

“Nothing can be more obvious,” writes Mr. Kidd,[36] “as soon as we begin to understand the nature of the process of evolution in progress around us, than that the moving force behind it is not the intellect, and that the development as a whole is not in any true sense an intellectual development.

* * * * *

“The intellect is employed in developing ground which has been won for it by other forces. But it would appear that it has by itself no power to occupy this ground; it has not even any power to continue to hold it after it has been won, when these forces have spent and exhausted themselves. The evolution which is slowly proceeding in human society is not primarily intellectual, but religious in character.”