other cause will not be without value or interest. It is indeed
remarkable that in the Middle Ages woman should for the first time have
attained her true rank, and that the highest conception of the female
character which the world had yet known should have been developed in
so rude and ferocious a time. The estimation in which women were held
among Eastern nations was little lower than their position among the
Jews. Where polygamy exists, and where purchase-money is paid to the
father of the bride, women never attain to high appreciation or
respect. Beauty rather than virtue was the ideal of Greece. The women
of that country, living in continual seclusion, deprived alike of
opportunities for attaining culture or exerting influence, became
narrowed in thought and intelligence, and passed their lives in
obscurity under the control of their husbands or sons.[8] Roman history
gives us examples of female excellence and distinction, and represents
women during some periods in a better position than had previously been
known. But the female sex was never accorded among the Romans the
general respect for its peculiar virtues, and the consideration for its
weakness which forms one of the brightest pages of modern civilization.
With the spread of Christianity, there was for centuries no
improvement. The low standard by which the Jews had judged the sex
exerted a strong and an evil influence. The spirit of asceticism,
rapidly gaining ground in the Roman Church, pointed out absolute
chastity in both sexes as the only praiseworthy condition of life, made
marriage only an excusable sin, and recognized in that relationship,
merely its use for the propagation of the species. Views so absurd and
unnatural could not fail in producing the most evil results. Woman came
to be regarded by the church as the origin of all sin, the favorite
medium of the temptations of the Devil, the sanctity and happiness of
marriage were interfered with, and the priesthood, debarred from that
condition, showed themselves not insensible to the charms they so