be the last to lay claim to such a doctrine. The Saints and Fathers of the Church, cited above, and whose utterances could be easily multiplied – and they are the leading Church authorities – express themselves separately and collectively hostile to woman and to marriage. The Council of Macon, which, in the sixteenth century, discussed the question whether woman had a soul, and which decided with a majority of but one vote, that she had, likewise argues against the theory of such a friendly posture towards woman. The introduction of celibacy by Gregory VII32– although resorted to first of all and mainly with the end in view of holding in the unmarried priesthood a power that could not be alienated from the service of the Church through any family interests – was, nevertheless, possible only with such fundamental doctrines as the Church held touching the sinfulness of the lusts of the flesh; and it goes to confirm our theory.
Neither did the Reformers, especially Calvin and the Scotch ministers, with their wrath at the "lusts of the flesh," entertain any doubt touching the hostile posture of Christianity towards woman.33
By the introduction of the cult of Mary, the Roman Catholic Church shrewdly placed the worship of Mary in the place of that of the heathen goddesses, in vogue among all the people over whom Christianity was then extending itself. Mary took the place of the Cybele, the Mylitta, the Aphrodite, the Venus, the Ceres, etc., of the southern races; of the Freia, the Frigga, etc., of the Germanian tribes. She was a mere spiritually-Christian idealization.
The primeval, physically robust, though rude yet uncorrupted races, that, during the first centuries of our reckoning, crowded down from the North and East like a gigantic ocean wave, and swamped the worn-out universal Empire of Rome, where Christianity had gradually been superimposing itself as master, resisted with all their might the ascetic doctrines of the Christian preachers. With good grace or bad, the latter were forced to reckon with these robust natures. With astonishment did the Romans perceive that the customs of those peoples were quite different from their own. Tacitus rendered to this fact the tribute of his acknowledgment, which, with regard to the Germans, he expressed in these words: "The matrimonial bond is, nevertheless, strict and severe among them; nor is there anything in their manners more commendable than this. Almost singly among the barbarians, they content themselves with one wife. Adultery is extremely rare among so numerous a people. Its punishment is instant, and at the pleasure of the husband. He cuts off the hair of the offender, strips her, and in the presence of her relations expels her from his house, and pursues her with stripes through the whole village. Nor is any indulgence shown to a prostitute. Neither beauty, youth, nor riches can procure her a husband; for none there looks on vice with a smile, or calls mutual seduction the way of the world. The youths partake late of the pleasures of love, and hence pass the age of puberty unexhausted; nor are the virgins hurried into marriage; the same maturity, the same full growth is required; the sexes unite equally matched, and robust; and the children inherit the vigor of their parents."
With the object in view of holding up a pattern to the Romans, Tacitus painted the conjugal conditions of the old Germans with rather too rosy a hue. No doubt, the adulteress was severely punished among them; but the same did not hold good with regard to the adulterer. At the time of Tacitus, the gens was still in bloom among the Germans. He, to whom, living under the advanced Roman conditions, the old gentile constitution, together with its principles, was bound to seem strange and incomprehensible, narrates with astonishment that, with the Germans, the mother's brother, considered his nephew as an own son; aye, some looked upon the bond of consanguinity between the uncle on the mother's side and his nephew as more sacred and closer than that between father and son. So that, when hostages were demanded, the sister's son was considered a better guarantee than an own son. Engels adds hereto: "If an own son was given by the members of such a gens as a pledge for a treaty, and he fell a sacrifice through his own father's violation of the treaty, the latter had to settle accounts for himself. If, however, it was a sister's son who was sacrificed, then the old gentile right was violated. The nearest gentile relative, held before all others to safeguard the boy or lad, had caused his death; he either had no right to offer him as a pledge, or he was bound to observe the treaty."34
For the rest, as Engels shows, the mother-right had already yielded to the father-right among the Germans, at the time of Tacitus. The children inherited from their father; in the absence of these, then the brothers and the uncle of the father on the mother's side. The admission of the mother's brother as an heir, although descent from the father determined the line of inheritance, is explained with the theory that the old right had only recently died away. It was only reminiscences of the old right that furnished the conditions, which enabled Tacitus to find a, to the Romans, incomprehensible regard for the female sex among the Germans. He also found that their courage was pricked to the utmost by the women. The thought that their women might fall into captivity or slavery was the most horrible that the old German could conceive of; it spurred him to utmost resistance. But the women also were animated by the spirit that possessed the men. When Marius refused the captured women of the Teutons to dedicate themselves as priestesses to Vesta (the goddess of maidenly chastity) they committed suicide.
In the time of Tacitus, the Germans already acquired settled habitations. Yearly the division of land by lots took place. Besides that, there was common property in the woods, water and pasture grounds. Their lives were yet simple; their wealth principally cattle; their dress consisted of coarse woolen mantles, or skins of animals. Neither women nor chiefs wore under-clothing. The working of metals was in practice only among those tribes located too far away for the introduction of Roman products of industry. Justice was administered in minor affairs by the council of elders; on more important matters, by the assembly of the people. The chiefs were elected, generally out of the same family, but the transition of the father-right favored the heredity of office, and led finally to the establishment of a hereditary nobility, from which later sprang the kingdom. As in Greece and Rome, the German gens went to pieces with the rise of private property and the development of industries and trade, and through the commingling with members of strange tribes and peoples. The place of the gens was taken by the community, the mark, the democratic organization of free peasants, the latter of which, in the course of many centuries, constituted a firm bulwark in the struggles against the nobility, the Church and the Princes, – a bulwark that broke down by little and little, but that did not wholly crumble even after the feudal State had come to power, and the one-time free peasants were in droves reduced to the condition of serfs and dependents.
The confederation of marks was represented by the heads of the families. Married women, daughters, daughters-in-law were excluded from council and administration. The time when women were conspicuous in the conduct of the affairs of the tribe – a circumstance that likewise astonished Tacitus in the highest degree, and which he reports in terms of contempt – were gone. The Salic law abolished in the fifth century of our reckoning the succession of the female sex to hereditary domains.
Soon as he married, every member of a mark was entitled to a share in the common lands. As a rule, grand-parents, parents and children lived under one roof, in communal household. Hence, with a view of being allotted a further share, under-aged or unripe sons were not infrequently married by their father to some marriageable maiden; the father then filled the duties of husband, in the stead of his son.35 Young married couples received a cart-load of beechwood, and timber for a block-house. If a daughter was born to the couple, they received one load of wood; if a son, two loads.36 The female sex was considered worth only one-half.
Marriage was simple. A religious formality was unknown. Mutual declarations sufficed. As soon as a couple mounted the nuptial bed, the marriage was consummated. The custom that marriage needs an act of the Church for its validity, came in only in the ninth century. Only in the sixteenth century, on decree of the Council of Trent, was marriage declared a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church.
With the rise of feudalism, the condition of a large number of the members of the
This was a move that the parish priests of the diocese of Mainz, among others, complained against, expressing themselves this wise: "You Bishops and Abbots possess great wealth, a kingly table, and rich hunting equipages; we, poor, plain priests have for our comfort only a wife. Abstinence may be a handsome virtue, but, in point of fact, it is hard and difficult." – Yves-Guyot: "Les Theories Sociales du Christianisme."
Buckle, in his "History of Civilization in England," furnishes a large number of illustrations on this head.
Engels' "Der Ursprung der Familie."
The same thing happened under the rule of the muir in Russia. See Lavelaye: "Original Property."
"Eyn iglich gefurster man, der ein kindbette hat, ist sin kint eyn dochter, so mag eer eyn wagen vol bornholzes von urholz verkaufen of den samstag. Ist iz eyn sone, so mag he iz tun of den dinstag und of den samstag von ligenden holz oder von urholz und sal der frauwen davon kaufen, win und schon brod dyeweile sie kintes june lit," – G. L. v. Maurer; "Geschichte der Markenverfassung in Deutschland."
