form of marriage existed known as “Usus,” which secured much freedom to
wives. It was entered into without the terrifying religious ceremonies
which made “Confarreatio,” practically indissoluble and the wife the
veritable slave of the husband, who held power even over her life.
Neither did it possess the civil formality of “Coemptio” under which
the bride purchased entrance into the marriage duties and her husband’s
household by the payment of three pieces of copper.[1] “Coemptio”
like “Confarreatio” gave the husband entire power over the person and
property of the wife, while “Usus,” a form of simple consent left the
wife practically free, keeping her own name and property. The real
origin of this form of marriage is not fully known. Maine declared
it to be as old as or even older than the Twelve Tables, under which
woman possessed the right to repudiation in marriage. These laws, a
compilation of still older ones, were afterwards incorporated into
statutes by a woman of Athens, and were received by the Romans as
extremely pure natural laws.[2] Plato refers to an early Athens
entirely ruled by women, its laws of pre-eminently just character.
Tradition, whose basis is half forgotten, half remembered history,
attributes the origin of Athens to the ancient Atlantians. The former
existence of this submerged continent is daily becoming more fully
recognized. The explorations of the “Challenger,” the “Dolphin,” the
“Gazelle,” and the discoveries of Le Plongeon in Yucatan, at later
date, confirming olden tradition. Maine thus ascribes a much older
origin to “Usus” than Gibbon, who attributes it to the effect of the
Punic triumphs.[3] In reality “Usus” seems to have been a reminiscence
of the Matriarchate, incorporated into the law of the Twelve Tables,
and accepted by Rome as a more just form of the marriage relation
for women than the religious “Confarraetio” or the civil form of
“Coemptio.” But as Rome increased in wealth and luxurious modes of
living, the influence of the Patriarchate correspondingly extended,
the perception of justice at the same time diminishing. Pomp and
ceremony were associated with the marriage rite among patricians,
while “Usus” was regarded as a plebeian form especially suited to the
populace. But at later date when Rome rebelling against the tyranny
of her rulers, tended towards a republican form of government, “Usus”
again became general. It was impossible for patrician women not to see
the greater freedom of plebeian wives under “Usus,” a form that while
equally binding in the essentials of the union did not make the wife
a marital slave,[4] and “Usus” eventually became the basis of Roman
legal conception of marriage, against which Christianity from the first
waged a warfare of ever increasing fierceness,[5] the very foundation
of that religion being the subordination of woman in every relation
of life. Under “Usus” the mere fact of two persons living together as
husband and wife was regarded as a marriage. If during each year the
wife remained away from the home for three days, she kept herself from
under her husband’s power. She remained a part of her father’s family;
her husband could not mortgage or in any way alienate her property.
This was absolutely contrary to the laws of the christian form of
marriage, under which the wife surrendered her person, her property,
and her conscience, into the indisputable control of the husband.
Under “Usus” a large proportion of Roman property fell into woman’s
hands. She became the real estate holder of the Eternal City and its
provinces, and in consequence was treated with great respect; the
holding of property, especially of real estate conducing to that end.
Under “Usus” the cruelties sanctioned by “Confarraetio” were rendered
impossible; a wife could no longer be put to death, as was formerly the
custom, for having tasted wine, a treacherous kiss from her husband
upon his return home, betraying her, nor could her infant daughter be
exposed or murdered at the pleasure of her husband who as inexorable
master was frequently wont to refuse her pleadings for the life of her
babe, calling her prayers naught but the scruples of a foolish woman.[6]
Thus under “Usus” human life became more sacred, and woman endowed with
a greater sense of personal security. It affected an entire change for
the better, in the moral sentiments of the Roman empire.[7] A complete
revolution had thus passed over the constitution of the family. This
must have been the period, says Maine, when a juriconsulist of the
empire defined marriage as a life long fellowship of all divine and
human rights.
Not alone Maine, but also Reeves, failed not to see that the
disruption of the Roman Empire was very unfavorable to the personal
and proprietory rights of woman.[8] The practical effect of the common
Roman form of marriage being the absolute legal independence of the
wife, under which a large proportion of Roman property fell into
the hands of women, the wife retaining her family name and family
inheritance. All this was changed as soon as Christianity obtained the
rule. Under Christian forms of marriage a wife was taken from her own
family and transferred into that of her husband the same as a piece of
property. She assumed his name, the same as the slave took that of the
new master to whom he was transferred. That this idea of the wife as a
slave did not belong alone to the earlier christian period, but is a
part of christian doctrine of today is clearly shown by the continued
custom of a woman’s dropping her family name upon marriage and assuming
that of the husband-master.
For this middle Roman period carried its blessings to wives no longer
than until the empire became christianized, when the tyranny of
ecclesiastical marriage again fell to woman’s lot. While under the
influence of “Usus,” Roman jurists of the middle period had declared
the ownership of property by married women to be a principle of equity;
this drew forth opposing legislation from the christians, and under
christian law, the husband again became master of his wife’s person,
and property, her children also falling under his entire control, the
mother possessing no authority over them. From that period down to the
twentieth century of christianity, under all changing civil laws, woman
has ever felt the oppressions of ecclesiasticism in this relation.[9]
Guizot strangely declares that woman’s present, and what he terms,
superior, position in the household today, is due to feudalism.[10]
The isolation and strife under which the nobility lived during the
feudal period, warring against each other when not engaged in foreign
aggression, compelled to certain forms of social life within each
castle, thus creating the modern family, or the family under its
present social form. At that period the feudal wife with her retinue of
household serfs and a vast number of her husband’s retainers in charge,
held a more responsible position than that of woman under primitive
christian habits of life. But the knights and lords of these feudal
castles were lecherous robbers, rather than men of kindly regard for
womankind. Their inclination was not towards justice or family life,
but the despoiling of all beneath them, and even of their equals with
whom they were not upon terms of amity. The ruins of such castles,
like the nest of the eagle, perched upon some inaccessible rock, add
today an element of picturesque beauty to the Rhine and other rivers
of Europe, but owe their elevated and isolated positions of the evil
character of their owners, the banditti of the middle ages.[11] When
not engaged with their king in warfare, they made the despoiling of
serfs and the betrayal of wives and daughters their chief diversion,
the robbery of burghers and travelers their business; churchmen equally
with laymen living by the same means.
During the year 1268, Rudolph of Germany, destroyed sixty-six castles
of these christian robber nobility in Thuringia alone, and hung
twenty-nine of these “family builders” at one time in Erfurt. He
compared Rome to the lion’s den in fable; the footsteps of many animals
to be found going thither, but none coming back. At this period the
soldiers of Christian Europe found pleasure in torture for its own
sake, chiefly selecting women as their victims. In mediaeval England
the condition of woman was one of deep degradation. Wives were bought
and daughters sold for many hundred years after the introduction of
Christianity.[12] Although England was christianized in the fourth
century, it was not until the tenth that the christian wife of a
christian husband acquired the right of eating at table with him, nor
until the same century did a daughter gain the right of rejecting the
husband her father might have selected for her. While the sale of
daughters was practiced in England for seven hundred years after the
introduction of Christianity, we note that by the ancient law of India,
a father was forbidden to sell his daughter in marriage, or receive the
smallest present therefor. In mediaeval England the daughter was held
as a portion of the father’s property to be sold to the highest bidder.
The Mundium[13] recognized the father’s right to sell his daughter to
the husband he might select for her, usually the highest bidder in
point of wealth or political influence. While Marquette pertained to
kings, feudal lords, and men of no family relationship to the victim,
Mundium inhered in the father himself. Through it he sacrificed his own
daughter for money or power.
The practice of buying wives with cattle or money was regulated both
in the laws of King Aethelbert and King Ine. In event of the woman who
had been thus bought, becoming a widow, half of the sum paid for her
seems to have been set aside for her support, provided her husband
had not died without issue. The other half remained absolutely the
property of her father, brother, or guardian by whom she had been
sold. At a somewhat later period the church doctrine of celibacy
influenced all ranks of men, while at the same time an unmarried woman
because of her maidenhood was regarded as disreputable. A bachelor
held honorable place, even though all celibate men were looked upon
as libertines of especially impure life. Warnings against matrimony
were the ordinary topics of conversation, while virtue in women was
held so little sacred that no nearness of relationship was security
for either a married or a single woman.[14] Husbands trafficked in the
honor of their wives, fathers sold their daughters,[15] yet if under
temptation, a woman fell, outside of such sale, her punishment was most
severe. To a husband was accorded the power of life and death over his
household, and either personally or by means of a hired assassin he
not unfrequently assigned his wife to death or to a punishment more
atrocious and barbarous.[16] Disraeli says:
If in these ages of romance and romances the fair sex were
scarcely approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever
“the course of true love” altered; when the frail spirit
loved too late, and should not have loved, the punishment
became more criminal than the crime, for there was more
selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of justice when
autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree.
The English christian husband of that age is paralleled by certain
North American Indians of the present day.[17] The horizon of woman’s
life was bounded by the wishes of her father or husband. Single, she
was regarded as a more or less valuable piece of property[18] for whose
sale the owner was entitled to make as good a bargain as possible. It
was as a bride that the greatest sum was secured.[19] Prominent among
the laws of the first Christian king of Kent, were provisions for the
transfer of money or cattle in exchange for the bride.[20] The theory
of woman’s ownership by man was everywhere carried into practice, and
with great severity in case the wife proved unfaithful to her enforced
vows. The facts that her consent to the marriage had not been asked,
that mayhap the man she was forced to wed was utterly repugnant to her,
that her affections might already have been bestowed, that she was
transferred like a piece of goods with no voice upon the question, were
not taken into consideration, and did the husband not choose to kill
his derelict spouse, the question still remained one of property,[21]
and a new bride was demanded of the lover in place of the wife whose
love he had gained.
A husband, attracted by a new face, more wealth, greater political
influence, or for any reason desiring to be rid of his wife, was
regarded as justifiable in hiring an assassin to strangle her, or
if walking by a river-brink, of himself pushing her into the water
where her cries for help were disregarded. Those in whose hearts pity
rose, were prevented from giving aid, but such remarks as, “It is
nothing, only a woman being drowned.”[22] A horse or other domestic
animal received more consideration than the women of a household.
Notwithstanding this period, the early part of the fourteenth century,
before the days of printing or rapid intercourse between nations, yet
the evil fame of christendom reached distant lands. Its hypocrisy and
baseness were known by those very Saracens from whom the Crusaders
attempted to wrest the Holy Sepulchre. To Sir John Mandeville, the
Sultan of Egypt mercilessly criticized the christianity of England[23]
and the christian method of serving God; the total disregard of
chastity, the sale of daughters, sisters and wives. We cannot agree
with Disraeli in his doubts if there was a single christian in all
christendom at this period. To the contrary, it may be regarded as an
epoch when the doctrines of christianity were most fully sustained, the
church at that time carrying out the principles of both the Old and the
New Testament regarding women. From Moses to Paul, the Bible everywhere
speaks of her as a being made for man, secondary to man, and under his
authority by direct command of the Almighty; the state, as coadjutor
and servant of the church, basing her codes of law[24] upon its
teachings. Under these codes woman has not only been looked upon as
naturally unchaste, but also regarded as a liar, the state demanding
the testimony of two or three, and in some instances of seven women to
invalidate that of one man; the man even then in extreme cases clearing
himself by his single oath. Condemned as having brought evil into the
world, woman’s every step was looked upon with suspicion, and the most
brutal treatment as far short of her just deserts. To speak well of
her was to cause misgivings of one’s self. The system of defamation
inaugurated by the church in reference to women, was later recognized
by the Jesuits as a most effective plan for the personal subjugation of
men. Busenbaum, an influential writer of this order, directing:
Whenever you would ruin a person you must begin by spreading
calumnies to defame them. Repetition and perseverance will at
length give the consistency of probability, and the calumnies
will stick to a distant day.
The astute Jesuits learned their lesson from church treatment of women.
Its practical results were ever before their eyes in the contempt with
which woman was regarded, and her own consequent loss of self respect.
Under early and mediaeval christian law, as in most states today, the
father alone had right to the disposal of his children. He possessed
the sole power of giving away his daughter in marriage; if he died,
this right devolved upon the eldest son; only in case there were no
sons was the right of the mother in any way recognized. If neither
father or brother were living, the mother gave her daughter away in
marriage, and this was the only instance in which one woman possessed
control over another woman, the law allowing the mother no voice in
the marriage of her daughter unless she was a widow without sons. So
greatly enslaved were daughters, that non-consent of the victim in
no way impaired the validity of the marriage.[25] A girl was simply
a piece of family property to be disposed of as the family thought
best. Although wives were simply the slaves of husbands, yet the
condition of an unmarried woman was even more deplorable. Deprived of
the society of young persons of her own sex, not allowed speech with
any man outside of her own family, she was fortunate if she escaped
personal[26] ill-treatment in her father’s house. Not permitted to sit
in the presence of either her father or her mother, continually found
fault with, the laws constraining her to marry while giving her no
preference as to a husband, and marriage still more fully taking from
her the control of her own person, yet it was anxiously looked forward
to as at least a change of masters, and the constant hope that in the
husband she might find a lover who for dear love’s sake would treat her
with common humanity.
Such was the condition of women during eighteen hundred years of
christianity. Legislated for as slaves, imprisoned for crimes that if
committed by a man were only punished by branding the hand; buried
alive for other crimes that committed by men were atoned for by the
payment of a fine; denied a share in the government of the family or
the church, their very sex deemed a curse, the twentieth century is
now about to open showing no truly enlightened nation upon the face
of the earth. From the barbarism of inhumanity the world is slowly
awakening to the fact that every human being stands upon the plane
of equal natural rights. The Church has not taught the world this
great truth, the State has not conceded it; its acknowledgment thus
far, has been due to the teachings of individual men and women, that
self-constituted authority over others a crime against humanity. Under
christian teaching regarding woman, the daughter was looked upon as a
more remote relative and heir than the son and this upon the ground of
her inferiority. Blackstone, although admitting that such views did
not pertain in Rome, yet speaks of males as “the worthier of blood.”
Such views were not held by pre-christian Britain. Under common law,
before that country accepted christianity, property was equally divided
between sisters, and only by special custom, between brothers.[27] But
as early as Henry II it was the general rule that a woman could not
share an inheritance with a man. An exception sometimes existed in a
particular city where such custom had long prevailed.
Until quite recently, English women have not been permitted to express
an opinion upon political questions, although the Primrose League and
other similar organizations have effected a great change within a few
years. Yet it is but little more than two hundred years, in 1664, at
Henley-upon-Thames, a woman having spoken against the taxation imposed
by Parliament, was condemned for this freedom of political criticism,
to have her tongue nailed to the body of a tree at the highway side
upon a market day, and a paper fastened to her back detailing the
heinousness of her offense. It was thus the state deterred similar
politically-minded women from the expression of their views, and in
line with the church used its most stringent measures to retain woman
in the “sphere” to which both church and state assigned her. Many
savage tribes of Africa exhibit the same grade of civilization that was
extant in christian England from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries.
A father will sell his daughter among Unyamwazi, Africa, for
one up to ten cows. A Lomali asks of a poor wooer from ten to
twenty horses, of a wealthy one from 100 upward, together with
fifty camels and 300 sheep. On the other hand, in Uganda, four
oxen are sufficient to buy the most perfectly formed village
belle, provided six needles and a box of cartridges are thrown
in.
The sale is the same, the payment alone of different character. An
African girl in case of a wealthy wooer, bringing even more than was
ordinarily received during the middle ages for an English christian
maiden. The patriarchal spirit wherever cropping out exhibiting the
same characteristics, whether among Jews, Christians, or African
savages. This is the more notable as among civilized or savage races
yet governed by the principles of the Matriarchate, the position of
woman is very high. In Samoa, no woman is compelled to work, all labor
of whatever character being performed by the men. The celebrated
traveler, Prof. Carl Lumholz, in his work “Among the Cannibals,” makes
some interesting statements in regard to the course adopted by the
natives of Georgia River, Australia, to save women from giving birth to
undesired children, and to prevent the needless suffering and infant
mortality so common in christian lands.
Among the methods adopted in christian countries for a continuance of
the crimes common in the marriage relation, have been more or less
stringent laws against divorce, ever falling with heaviest force upon
her whom christian marriage laws have made a slave. The “Christian
Union” declares as a significant act of evil import, that “in Wyoming,
where the power of woman in affairs of government is greatest, one
divorce takes place in every six marriages, the proportion being
greater than in any other state.” But if this assertion of the
“Christian Union” is true, it is proof that a share in making the laws
which govern her is wisely used by the women of that state; and it
marks a new era in civilization, when woman holding political power
in her own hands, refuses longer to degrade herself by living in a
relation that has lost the binding power of love. The laws of church
and of state during the christian ages originated with man, and it
is a promising sign of woman’s growth in self-reliance, independent
thought, and purity of character, that she thus protests against the
bondage of a relation which virtually holds the wife as slave of the
husband; for despite the changes of the last four and a half decades,
we still find the general tone of legislation in line with the church
teaching of woman’s created inferiority to man. We still find belief
in the wife’s duty of obedience to the husband; we still discover the
church, the state, the world, all regarding the exercise of her own
judgment even upon the questions most closely related to herself as
woman’s greatest sin. As free as woman is called today, she has not yet
as daughter secured perfect liberty of choice in marriage, the power of
the family too often compelling her into a hated relation. Money still
leads parents to prefer one suitor above another, even in the United
States; while in many European countries, marriages are arranged by
friends, or through a broker, entirely without the girl’s consent, who
is frequently taken from a convent or school to be thus sold to some
wealthy and perhaps octogenarian wooer, who covets the youth or beauty
of the victim.[28]
The burning of twenty missionaries in a portion of savage Africa,
a few years since, filled the civilized world with horror. But for
several hundred years after the introduction of christianity into
Great Britain, the penalty for simple theft by a woman slave was
burning alive, and all the other women slaves were compelled to assist
her _auto-de-fe_. Upon such an occasion mentioned by Pike, eighty
other women each brought a log of wood for the burning.[29] By the
old Roman Code, burning alive as a punishment was forbidden because
of its barbarity, but christianity reintroduced it, and for long
centuries after the destruction of the Roman Empire, that other land
aspiring to control of the sea, which proudly boasts that the sun
never sets on her possessions, kept it in her criminal code for the
punishment of helpless women.[30] So rigorous was woman’s slavery that
the friendships of women with each other, or with men, were strictly
prohibited; yet the deep affection of one man for another to whom he
consecrated his life and fortune, and of whom he spoke with that deep
tenderness, was highly commended.[31] The despotic, irresponsible power
of husbands in christian England at this period is shown by the diverse
manner in which the murder of a wife by a husband, or a husband by a
wife, was regarded. For husband to murder a wife either by his own
hands or those of a hired assassin, was of frequent occurrence, but as
she was his slave over whom he had power of life and death, this was
looked upon as a trivial affair. But under the laws of both church and
state, the murder of a husband by a wife was regarded as petty treason,
to be punished with the utmost severity, burning alive being a not
uncommon form.[32]