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 WOMAN

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WOMAN

tic society as tlir mistress of the home. At the same time the indispensable motherly influence ex- tends from the home over the development of law and custom. While, however, man is called to share directly in the affairs of the state, female influence can be ordinarily exerted upon such matters only indirectly. Consequently, it is only in exceptional cases that in Christian kingdoms the direct sover- eignty is placed in tlie hands of women, as is shown by the women who have ascended thrones. In the Church this exception is excluded, so far as it refers to the clerical ofiioe. The same Apostle who so energetically maintained the personal independence of woman, forbids to women authoritative speech in the religious assemblies and the supremacy over man (I Tim., ii, 11, 12). Nevertheles.s, personahties like Pulcheria, Hildcgarde, Catherine of Siena, and Te- resa of Jesus show how gi'eat the extraordinary, in- direct influence of woman can be in the domain of the Church.

From the days of the Apostles, Christianity has never failed to seek and to defend the emancipation of woman in the meaning of its Founder. It must be acknowledged that human passions have frequently prevented the bringing about of a condition fully cor- responding with the ideals. The Christian, mdis- Boluble, sacramental marriage, in which the husband is to copy in respect to the wife the love of Christ for the Church (Eph., v, 2.5), was steadily defended for the benefit of the woman against the lawlessness of the ruling class. On this point St. Jerome presents the same conception of morals in contrast to heathen immorahty in words that have become classic: "The laws of the emperor are to one effect, those of Christ to another ... in the former the restraints upon impurity are left loose for men . . . among us Chris- tians, on the contrary, the belief is: What is not per- mitted to women is also forbidden to men, and the same service (that of Cod) is also judged by the same standard" ("Ep. Ixxvii, ad Ocean.", P. L., XXII, 691). The admiring exclamation of the heathen: "What women there are among the Christians!" is the most eloquent testimony to the power of Christianity. The great Church Fathers praise not only their mothers and sisters, but speak of Christian women in general in the same terms of respect as the Gospel. On the other hand, the alleged contempt of the Church Fathers for women is a legend that is kept ahve by the lack of knowledge of the Fathers (cf. Mausbach, "Altchristliche und modeme Gedanken uber Frauen- beruf ", 7th ed., Mtinchen-Gladbach, 1910, 5 sq.).

From the beginning up to the present time the Christian doctrine of voluntary religious virginity has profhiced innumerable hosts of virgins dedicated to God who unite their love of God with heroic love of their neighbours, and who perform silent deefls of heroism in the nursing of the sick, in the care of the poor, and in the work of education. The modern era since the French Revolution has far exceeded the earlier centuries in congregations of women for all branches of Christian charity and for the alleviation of all forms of misery. Consequently Christianity has opened to woman the greatest possibilities for development. Mar\-, the sister of Lazarus, who sat as a disciple at the feet of Jesus, has become a model for the training of woman in Christianity. The study of the Scriptures, which was equally customary both in the East and the West among educated women under the guidance of the Church, remained during the entire Middle Ages the inheritance of the convents. Tims, next to the clergy, the women in the medieval era were more the representatives of learn- ing and education than the men.

The industrial work of women kept pace with the development of civilization. When the guilds arose at the time of the founding of the cities women were not excluded from them. Any idea of the parity of

the sexes in this domain was excluded by the con- sideration of the fir.st natural task of woman. Among indigent women Christianity found that the widows were those most in need of aid. From the days of the Apostles, the Church made special pro- vision for widows (Acts, vi, 1; I Tim., v, 3 sq.), a provision that was one of the chief duties of the bishop. To the Apostolic era also dates back the institution called the viduate, in which widows of proved virtue laboured as Apostolic assistants in the Church along with the virgins. In the course of time female orders assumed this work, which is carried on most succes.sfuUy in the missions for heathens. As, during the conversion to Christianity of the German tribes, Anglo-Saxon women aided St Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, so to-day perma- nent success in the missionary countries cannot be attained without the help of virgins consecrated to God. At the end of the ninteenth century some 52,- 000 sisters, among whom were 10,000 native women, worked in the missions (Louvet, "Les missions oath. du XIX' siecle", 2nd ed., Paris, 1898).

The Modern Woman Question. — It follows from what has been said that the social position of woman is, from the Christian point of view, only imperfectly set forth in the expression " Woman belongs at home". On the contrarj', her peculiar influence is to extend from the home over State and Church. This was maintained at the beginning of the modern era by the Spanish Humanist, Louis Vives, in his work " De insti- tutione femina; clu'istianfe" (1523); and was brought out still more emphatically, in terms corresponding to the needs of his day, by Bishop Fenelon in his pioneer work "Education des fiUes" (1687). This Christian emancipation of woman is, however, necessarily checked as soon as its fundamental principles are attacked. These principles consist, on the one hand, of the sacramental dignity of the indissoluble marriage between one pair, and in religious, voluntarilj' chosen virginity, both of which spring from the Christian teaching that man's true home is in a world beyond the grave and that the same sublime aim is appomted for woman as for man. The other fundamental prin- ciple consists of the firm adhesion to the natural organic intimate connexion of the sexes.

As far back as Christian antiquity the Manichaean attacks on the sacredness of marriage, as those of Jovinian and Vigilantius, which sought to under- mine the reverence for virginity, were refuted by Augustine and Jerome. Luther's attack upon relig- ious celibacy and against the sacramental character and indissolubility of marriage, worked permanent injury. The chief result was that woman was again brought into ab.solute dependence upon man, and the way was made ready for divorce, the results of which press far more heavily upon woman than upon man. After this the natural ba.sis of society and the natiu-al position of woman and the family were shaken to such extent by the French Revolution that the germ of the modern woman's suffrage movement is to be sought there. The anti-Christian ideas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries led to a complete break with the medieval Christian concep- tion of society and the state. It w.as no longer the family or the social principle th:il w.'is regarded as the basis of the state, but the individual or the ego. Montesquieu, the"fatherof constitutionalism", made this theory the basis of his "L'Esprit des lois" (1784), and it was sanctioned in the French "Rights of Man". It w.as entirely logical that Olympe de Gouges (d. 1793) and the "citizeness" Fontenay, supported by the Marquis de Condorcet, demanded the uncondi- tional i)olitical equality of women with men, or "the rights of women". .According to these claims every human being has, .as a human being, the .same human rights; women, as human beings, claim like men with alwolute right the same participation in parliament