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.