Woman, Church & State

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.425 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 property426 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.427 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.428 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,429 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.”430 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 England431 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 law432 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.433 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 personal434 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.435 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.436

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.437 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.438 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.439 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.440

Under christian legislation not alone the wife’s person but her property so fully became her husband’s that her use of any portion of it thereafter without his consent was regarded as theft; and such is still the law in the majority of christian countries; it is less than sixty years since a change in this respect took place in any part of the christian world. While a wife may steal from her husband it is still the law that a husband cannot steal from his wife. If she allows him to transact business for her, or in any way obtain possession of her property even for a moment, he has acquired its legal ownership. Since the passage of the Married Woman’s Property Act, the courts of England have decided that a husband cannot steal from his wife while she is living with him. A case before Baron Huddleston, 1888, commented upon by the Pall Mall Gazette, under head of “Stealing from a Wife,” called attention to the superior position of the mistress in respect to property rights over that of the wife.

Can a husband rob his wife? Baron Huddleston yesterday answered this by saying he can not rob her at all under the common law, which regards all the wife’s property as the husband’s; and, theft is only robbery under the Married Women’s Property Act, when the wife is living apart from her husband, or when he is preparing to desert her. It is really quite amazing how many advantages a mistress has over a wife in all matters relating to property and to person. It almost seems as if the object of the law was to inflict such disabilities on wives in order to induce the fair sex to prefer concubinage to matrimony.

The separate moral codes for man and woman in all christian lands, show their evil aspect in many ways. Adultery, in all christian countries is held to be less sinful for men than for women. In England, while the husband can easily obtain a divorce from the wife upon the ground of adultery, it is almost impossible for the wife to obtain a divorce from the husband upon the same ground. Nothing short of the husband’s bringing another woman into the house to sustain wifely relations to him, at all justifies her in proceedings for a separation; and even then, the husband retains a right to all the wife’s property of which he was in possession, or which may have fallen into his hands. Less than a dozen years since, an English husband willed his wife’s property to his mistress and her children of whom he was the father. The wife, (in what is known as “The Birchall Case”), contested the will, but the courts not only decided in its favor, but added insult to that legal robbery, by telling the wife that a part of her money was enough for her, and that she ought to be willing that her husband’s mistress and illegitimate children should share it with her.

Woman’s disobedience to man is regarded by both the church and the state as disobedience to God. As late as the first half of the present century it was held as constructive treason, in England, punishable by the state, for a wife to refuse obedience to her husband’s commands or in any way to question his authority. She was required to be under submission to him as the direct representative of the deity. For the woman who protested against this annihilation of her individuality, a flogging was the customary form of punishment and so common was the use of the whip that its size was regulated by law.441 The punishment of petit treason442 was more severe for woman than for man because her crime was regarded as of a more heinous character. She was dragged on the ground or pavement to the place of execution then burned alive; a man was drawn and hanged. It was long after the conquest before even a man convicted of treason secured the right of being carried to execution on a sledge or hurdle. Blackstone comments upon the extreme torment of being dragged on the ground or pavement. In case of a woman the wounds and lacerations thus received must have greatly added to her intensity of suffering, yet so blinded was he through those laws, that he calls her punishment of burning, a tribute to the “decency due to the sex.”443

During a portion of the christian era the wife has not been looked upon as related to her husband. The residuum of this disbelief in the relationship of husband and wife, occasionally shows itself to the present day.444 She was his slave under both religious and civil law, holding the same relations to him as the subject did to the king, and liable to punishments similar to those inflicted upon unruly slaves, or disloyal subjects. Rebellion against the husband’s authority was treason punishable by law, similarly as treason to the king. The difference was but in name. Down to the end of the eighteenth century in England, the wife who had murdered her husband was burned alive; if the husband murdered his wife he suffered simple decapitation, “the same as if he had murdered any other stranger.” For the wife’s crime of petit treason the penalty was that of the slave who had killed her master. It is scarcely a hundred years since the punishment of burning the wife alive for the murder of her husband, or the female slave for the murder of her master, as petit treason, passed out of the English penal code; the last instance occurring in 1784, eight years after our declaration of independence. This same code was operative in the colonies; the last woman thus punished in this country, being a slave in 1755, who had murdered her master, America having twenty-nine years precedence in the abolition of this penalty.445

A cablegram from Europe, September 1892, proves the continued existence in this last decade of the nineteenth century of the crime of petit treason, and also the barbarous punishment still inflicted under christian law, upon the wife who murders her husband. This case, occurring in Finland, was carried up to the Court of Appeals, which not only affirmed the decision of the lower court but decreed additional punishment. Because the wife had also forged her husband’s name for small sums of money, having under law, first been robbed by him of her earnings, the judgment of having her right hand cut off, was added to the original sentence. She was then decapitated, her body fastened to a stake, covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes. Although this wife was not burned alive, the barbarity of her punishment was most atrocious, and took place under the christian laws of the church and the state, in a Protestant country in the “year of our Lord,” 1892. That the punishment was infinitely more severe than would have been inflicted upon the husband in case he had murdered his wife, was due to christian teaching of woman’s inferiority and subordination to man; thus making the wife’s crime that of petit treason, under law only a trifle less heinous than murdering a king, or attempting destruction of the government. Had the husband murdered the wife it would have been, according to legal prevision, the same as if he had killed “any other stranger.” The marriage ceremony robbed her of her property and earnings, but in equity the money she was accused of stealing from him belonged to her. Under the laws of most christian states, a woman is robbed of herself and all of her possessions by the simple fact of her marriage. Under christian laws the services of the wife in the marital relation are all due to the husband,446 her earnings all belong to him; she is a slave owning nothing and with no rights in the property her husband calls his own. This wife’s crime was provoked by pre-existing criminal legislation of the christian church and state. Possessing no legal right to the control of her own person, property or conscience, the wife was held to have sinned against a divinely appointed master to whom she owed more than human allegiance: she was a criminal so great that the punishment of severing her hand and head were deemed entirely inadequate, and her body fastened to a stake was covered with inflammable material and burned to ashes.[39]

While the external government of Finland, as declarations of war, peace, treaties, etc., is under control of the Czar, or Grand Duke, yet in the internal administration of affairs this country is an Independent State, under a Constitution dating 1772, and confirmed by three successive czars. It became christianized in the twelfth century but is not under the Greek church; its established religion is Evangelical and Lutheran, under control of the archbishop of Abo, and the bishops of Bogia and Knopo; an ecclesiastical assembly meeting every ten years; and the Diet, composed of representatives of the clergy, nobility, citizens and peasants, every five years. Without consent of these bodies no laws are enacted or repealed; but woman possesses no representation either in ecclesiastical or civil affairs.

The old law of marriage instituted by the church, which held the wife as belonging body and soul to the husband who not alone possessed control over her actions but decided her religion, is still extant. In but few countries do we see a tendency towards its abolition, even those that have somewhat favorably legislated upon the question, still retaining the general principle of a wife’s subserviency to her husband. A few years since an English lady desirous of uniting with the Catholic church was refused consent by her husband, “a staunch churchman.” Unknown to him she was received into that body, which proved occasion of an animated controversy between the husband and the late Cardinal Manning, the former basing his opposition and his letter of remonstrance to the cardinal upon the ground of the admitted legal right of a husband, under English law, to ordain the form of his wife’s religion.447 Nor do we find material difference in the United States. In Virginia, in the winter of 1891, a wife, despite the opposition of her husband caused her infant to be baptized by an Episcopal clergyman into that church, the husband openly expressing his disapproval while the ceremony was in progress, and afterwards suing the clergyman for an interference with his vested rights over wife and child. This supreme authority of the husband in christian countries is shown in many strange ways. Among the Hindoos the naming of the child belongs to the mother. If the father expresses desire for a different name, each one is written upon a paper over which lighted lamps are set, the one burning the longest deciding the choice of name. But in Rhode Island as late as 1892, a controversy between the parents as to the naming of a child was settled by law. The father and mother each filed a certificate with the registrar; the father employing a lawyer who to the satisfaction of the city solicitor proved his client’s prior right, and an order was issued to the registrar in favor of the father’s choice of name.448 The claim of the christian husband in each of these instances was that of his supreme and prior right, on the church theory incorporated into law, that both wife and child belong to the husband. The celebrated Agar-Ellis case in England during the latter part of the seventies, was brought by a wife to compel the keeping by a husband of his pledges in regard to the religious education of his children. The decision was against the wife, upon the general ground that a wife had no rights in law as against a husband. A man’s pledged word broken at the gaming table renders him infamous and subjects him to dishonor through life. But a husband’s pledged word broken to his wife, under ruling of the highest court and the profoundest legal talent of England, the Court of Appeals, and the Vice-Chancellor, is just, implying no dishonor, but rather entitling him to respect as a man who in a befitting manner has maintained his marital rights and authority. The judge instructed the wife that she had no right to teach her children what her husband did not believe, even though she herself most fully believed what she taught. He impressed upon her that she was not rearing her children for herself, but as her husband’s property, over which she possessed no control only in so far as the husband made her his agent. In affirming the order of the Vice-Chancellor, the court of appeals declared that the father had the legal right to bring up the children in his own faith, and in pledging his word to the contrary he had in no way forfeited or abandoned his authority. This decision of the English Court of Appeals, is in accord with the laws of the United States. The Albany N. Y. Law Journal in commenting upon this case under the head of “Curious Question,” declared the decision to be in harmony with the general rule as to religious education; the child is to be educated in the religion of the father.