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The souls of women are so small,
That some believe they"ve none at all.
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Samuel Butler (1612-1680), Miscellaneous
Thoughts
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Historically the church's position on this matter followed
the biblical texts such as Genesis 3:16, where God tells Eve
that her husband will rule over her, and passages where wives
are listed along with a man's other goods and chattels. This
view is comprehensively confirmed in the New Testament:
Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is
fit in the Lord.
Colossians 3:18; cf. 1 Peter 3:1 and Ephesians 5:22
... I would have you know, that the head of every man is
Christ; and the head of the woman is the man ... For a man
indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the
image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the
man. For the man is not of the woman: but the woman of the
man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman
for the man.
1 Corinthians 11:3 and 7-9
Let your women keep silence in churches: for it is not permitted
unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience,
as also saith the law.
1 Corinthians 14:34, cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3-9 and 1 Timothy
2:11-12
  In
line with these statements women were until recent times not
permitted to speak in church, and they are still expected to
cover their heads in traditional churches. Under Christian emperors
and bishops the rights that women had enjoyed under the Roman
Empire were gradually pared away. As early as the fourth century
it was decreed by a synod that women should neither send nor
receive letters in their own name (Synod of Elvira, canon 81
). They were also confined to minor Orders and forbidden to
sing in church. Later they would be deprived of Holy Orders
altogether. By 581 a Church Council at Mâcon was debating
whether or not women had souls. Church law followed the bible:
Wives are to obey their husbands.
There is a natural order in human affairs such that wives
obey their husbands, and children their parents [Col. 3:18,
20], because it is just that the lesser serve the greater.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q IV, C12)
A wife has no power of her own, but is to submit to her husband's
dominion in everything.
It is fitting that a woman be subject to her husband's dominion
and have no independent authority [cf. Col. 3:18]. She is
not to teach him, testify against him, bind him, or judge
him [cf. 1 Cor. 14:34-35].
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q V, C17)
The woman ought to veil her head [1 Cor. 11:7-10], since
she is not the image of God. Rather she should wear this as
a symbol of her subjection, because the Fall began with her.
Out of respect for the bishop, let her not have her head uncovered
in church, but covered by a veil [1 Cor. 11:5]. Let her have
no power to speak, because the bishop represents the person
of Christ [1 Cor. 14:34]. As she would be before Christ the
Judge, so let her be before the bishop, because he is the
Lord's vicar. Let her be subject, on account of original sin.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q V, C19)
 The
great Roman Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas taught that women
were defective men, imperfect in both body and soul. They were
conceived either because of defective sperm or because a damp
wind was blowing at the time of conception*.
Leading scholars accepted Aquinas's teaching that women had
a higher water content than men and that this made them sexually
incontinent*. Since they
were so watery, weak and unreliable it became a fundamental
premise of canon law that they were inferior beings. Following
Aquinas*, canon law decreed
that women could not witness a will. Neither could they testify
in disputes over wills, nor in criminal proceedings Generally
women suffered the same sort of legal disabilities as children
and imbeciles. They could not practice medicine, law or any
other profession, nor could they hold any public office. Here
is a piece of reasoning from two famous Roman Catholic scholars:
after saying that women are intellectually like children, they
explain why women are given to the practice of witchcraft:
But the natural reason is that she is more carnal than a
man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations. And it
should be noted that there was a defect in the formation of
the first woman, since she was formed from a bent rib, that
is, rib of the breast, which is bent as it were in a contrary
direction to a man. And since through this defect she is an
imperfect animal, she always deceives*.
Women, as inferiors to and possessions of men, were not free
to choose their own marriage partners:
Only those who have authority over a woman, and from whose
custody she is sought as wife, can make a lawful marriage.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 30, q V, C1)
Protestant Churches were no better than the Roman Catholic
Church. Luther observed that "Women ... have but small
and narrow chests, and broad hips, to the end that they should
remain at home, sit still, keep house, and bear and bring up
children". The idea is often abbreviated in English to
"A woman's place is in the home". Luther was often
quoted with approval during the Nazi period, and in strongly
religious areas of Germany it is still commonplace to hear that
women should concern themselves only with kinder, kirche,
küche (children, the Church and cooking), an attitude
that has caused a modern childcare crisis in Germany according
to the country's Minister for Family Affairs.*.
Luther also insisted on a man's traditional Christian right
to beat his wife. He also held firmly to the traditional line
on a woman's duty to bear children, even if it killed her: "If
they become tired or even die, it does not matter. Let them
die in childbirth — that is why they are there"*.
Under canon law a woman's husband was both her sovereign and
her guardian. In practical terms this meant that she could not
legally own property or make contracts. She could not sue at
common law without her husband's consent, which meant that in
particular she could not sue him for any wrong done to her.
If she deliberately killed him, she was guilty not merely of
murder but, because of the feudal relationship, treason*.
Within living memory it was common in Christian countries for
a married woman to be denied credit, and to require her husband's
consent for surgical operations. This is still the case in some
particularly devout areas, for example in Switzerland After
all 1 Corinthians 7:4 states that "The wife hath not power
of her own body, but the husband ...". (The Bible goes
on to state the converse — that a wife has power over her
husband's body — but canon lawyers either missed this part
or else deduced that it bore a completely different interpretation.
As Gratian put it "The woman has no power, but in everything
is subject to the control of her husband".
 So
it was that under the Christian Salic Law, women were debarred
from inheriting throughout much of Europe. As one chronicler
put it in the Fourteenth Century with reference to Isabelle
sister of the French King Charles IV: "the realm of France
was so noble that it must not fall into a woman's hands."
(Jean Froissart {c. 1337 – c. 1405}, Chronicles
Ch XXI)
Even an English queen's job, spelled out in an old marriage
service was “to be bonay and buxome in bed and at board*”.
In the words of the Anglican marriage service a married couple
were one flesh, and the canon lawyers held them to be a single
person: erunt animae duae in carne una.
The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended
during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated
into that of her husband*.
 It
was this legal doctrine that gave rise to Dickens" observation,
put into the mouth of one of his characters, that the law is
an ass*. The doctrine
enabled an Englishman to lock up his wife and not be liable
for the tort of false imprisonment. He could beat her and not
be guilty of assault. The
same principle permitted him to rape her without the law recognising
it as rape. A wife could not proceed against her husband, nor
be called to give evidence in court against him. Most such constraints
were done away with in Britain by Acts of Parliament in 1935
and 1945* in the teeth
of fierce opposition from the organised Churches. In England
it remained impossible for a man to be charged with the rape
of his wife until the 1990s.
Unmarried women were also inferior beings, or as the Bible
puts it weaker vessels (1 Peter 3:7). Fathers were
free to treat them as their personal property and swap them
for other goods or for political advantage, which is what arranged
child marriages often amounted to. Unmarried adult women were
not permitted many of the privileges allowed by law to men,
nor thought capable of fulfilling the duties expected of men.
Like married women, they were prohibited from practising all
professions and all but a few trades. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V
even forbade them to appear on the public stage within his dominions.
Soon the whole of Western Christendom had banned actresses and
female singers.
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Throughout the whole Christian period
and into the 1960s, it was taken for granted that a man
was entitled to beat his wife. The idea would have seemed
slightly old-fashioned when this advertisement was made,
but people would still be expected to recognise the biblical
reference: "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which
indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of
dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness". (Matthew
23: 27)
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Women's lives were of such little consequence that they carried
no wieght in moral decisions. For example what should a man
do if he has promised to marry a woman, but then decides he
wants to become a monk. The answer has no moral merit, but satified
the Church:
One who has sworn to contract marriage with a woman, if he
wishes to enter religious life, ought first to contract marriage
to fulfill the vow, and then he may enter a monastery before
having carnal intercourse.
Decretals of Gregory IX , Book Four, title I, C. 16
The woman had no say in this, and being officially married
was not permitted to divorce and remarry. If she was a good
Christian, her life was completely ruined. The business of women
was to marry and have children, and failure to do this was deeply
shameful, an idea enshrined in cannon law:
Bearing children is the sole reason for marriage.
It is shameful for a woman when her marriage bears no fruit,
for this alone is the reason for marrying.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 32, q II, C1)
And failure to marry at all was even worse. According to Christian
thought old maids would spend eternity "leading apes in
hell", a sobering idea when one considers that in this
context the word "lead" is a euphemism for sexual
intercourse.
Church law made provision for husbands who killed their wives,
such husbands apparently being regarded as less culpable if
they were young:
As to those who killed their wives without trial, since you
do not add that these were adulteresses or anything like that,
should they be accounted other than murderers subject to penance?
They are absolutely forbidden to remarry, unless they are
young men...
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q I, C5)
Whoever kills his wife without right, cause, or certain proof,
and takes another, must put aside his arms and do public penance.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q II, C7)
Gratian: The foregoing authorities forbid killing adulterous
wives, but permit sending them away after seven years of penance.
Those who kill them lose all hope of remarriage, unless mercy
is granted them to contract marriage on account of their falling
into youthful incontinence.
(Decretum gratiani, Case 33, q II, C9)
 Well
into the twentieth century women were debarred from sitting
on juries and were permitted only a few selected jobs, such
as school teaching and nursing. Even these they were generally
obliged to give up when they got married. Women were so little
regarded that until this century they were often excluded from
Church membership rolls. No one knows with certainty how large
some denominations were until recently, because they did not
count women in their membership statistics.
Throughout their histories, the Churches have consistently
opposed women's right to the franchise. Only after the Church's
influence had seriously weakened did women obtain the vote.
In England this happened in 1918, when the franchise was extended
to women over the age of thirty. Even now women do not enjoy
equality in all spheres of life. In England, for example, the
taxation laws and laws of inheritance still discriminate against
them. There are areas of Europe where traditional Christian
values prevail and women were denied the vote until recent times*.
There is one area in the European Community, Mount Athos in
Greece, where for religious reasons women are not even permitted
to set foot.
 The
traditional position of the Church, that women were mere chattels
of their husbands, was challenged by the usual selection of
freethinkers such as Thomas Paine and Jeremy Bentham. The atheist
Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights
of Women in 1792. Her husband, the philosopher William
Godwin (1756-1836), was a campaigner for women's rights, and
so was their atheist son-in-law, the poet Shelley. Other prominent
proponents included the unbelieving Mary Anne Evans (1819-1880),
whose pen name was George Eliot, and Harriet Law (1832-1897).
The Utilitarian J. S. Mill launched the women's suffrage movement
in England with a petition to the House of Commons on 7 th June
1866. He published The Subjection of Women in 1869.
Other active campaigners included the atheists George Holyoake,
Charles Bradlaugh and Annie Besant. In France the argument for
women's rights was led by enemies of the Church like Denis Diderot
(1713-1784) and the Marquis de Condorcet (1743-1794), and much
later in the USA by atheists like Ernestine Rose, Matilda Gage,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Anthony.
 It
seems that a disturbing number of men, bolstered by Christian
attitudes, still assume that they have the right to subjugate,
abuse and beat their wives*.
A sociological study in 1962 revealed that religious orthodoxy
was positively correlated with social conservatism on issues
such as women's rights*.
It is notable that the Church continued to discriminate against
women for years after such discrimination was abandoned outside
the Church. It was not until 1970 that a woman was authorised
to teach Roman Catholic theology*,
and throughout the world Churches are still given exemption
from sex discrimination legislation. Senior Anglican clergymen
could still be outraged in 1996 at the idea of a woman playing
the part of God in the York Mystery Plays — denouncing
it as paganism*. Christian
mainstream thought is now in the process of change. The more
liberal sects have started ordaining women again, while the
more traditional ones still hold out against it. For them feminism
is little short of demonism. .
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The ardent Christian evangelist Pat Robinson
spoke for many traditionalists when he pointed out that
feminism has anti-Christian consequences in a 1992 Iowa
fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment
("Equal Rights Initiative in Iowa Attacked",
Washington Post, 23 August 1992)
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