Chapter 83
763 Legouve, p. 199.
764 See some curious pa.s.sages in Troplong, pp. 222-223. The Fathers seem to have thought dissolution of marriage was not lawful on account of the adultery of the husband, but that it was not absolutely unlawful, though not commendable, for a husband whose wife had committed adultery to re-marry.
765 Some of the great charities of Fabiola were performed as penances, on account of her crime in availing herself of the legislative permission of divorce.
766 Laboulaye, _Recherches sur la Condition civile et politique des Femmes_, pp. 152-158.
767 "A discourse concerning the obligation to marry within the true communion, following from their style (_sic_) of being called a holy seed." This rare discourse is appended to a sermon against mixed marriages by Leslie. (London, 1702.) The reader may find something about Dodwell in Macaulay's _Hist. of England_, ch. xiv.; but Macaulay, who does not appear to have known Dodwell's masterpiece-his dissertation _De Paucitate Marturum_, which is one of the finest specimens of criticism of his time-and who only knew the discourse on marriages by extracts, has, I think, done him considerable injustice.
768 Dodwell relies mainly upon this fact, and especially upon Ezra's having treated these marriages as essentially null.
769 "Jungere c.u.m infidelibus vinculum matrimonii, prost.i.tuere gentilibus membra Christi."-Cyprian, _De Lapsis_.
770 "Haec c.u.m ita sint, fideles Gentilium matrimonia subeuntes stupri reos esse constat, et arcendos ab omni communicatione fraternitatis."-Tert. _Ad Uxor._ ii. 3.
771 See on this law, and on the many councils which condemned the marriage of orthodox with heretics, Bingham, _Antiq._ xxii. 2, ---- 1-2.
772 Many curious statistics ill.u.s.trating this fact are given by M.
Bonneville de Marsangy-a Portuguese writer who was counsellor of the Imperial Court at Paris-in his _etude sur la Moralite comparee de la Femme et de l'Homme_. (Paris, 1862.) The writer would have done better if he had not maintained, in lawyer fas.h.i.+on, that the statistics of crime are absolutely decisive on the question of the comparative morality of the s.e.xes, and also, if he had
773 See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._ x.x.xiv. 19.
774 "Tantum inter Stoicos, Serene, et ceteros sapientiam professos interesse, quantum inter fminas et mares non immerito dixerim."-_De Const. Sapientis_, cap. i.
775 This is well ill.u.s.trated, on the one side, by the most repulsive representations of Christ, by Michael Angelo, in the great fresco in the Sistine Chapel (so inferior to the Christ of Orgagna, at Pisa, from which it was partly imitated), and in marble in the Minerva Church at Rome; and, on the other side, by the frescoes of Perugino, at Perugia, representing the great sages of Paganism. The figure of Cato, in the latter, almost approaches, as well as I remember, the type of St. John.
776 In that fine description of a virtuous woman which is ascribed to the mother of King Lemuel, we read: "She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy." (Proverbs x.x.xi. 20.) I have already quoted from Xenophon the beautiful description of the Greek wife tending her sick slaves. So, too, Euripides represents the slaves of Alcestis gathering with tears around the bed of their dying mistress, who, even then, found some kind word for each, and, when she died, lamenting her as their second mother. (Eurip. _Alcest._) In the servile war which desolated Sicily at the time of the Punic wars, we find a touching trait of the same kind. The revolt was provoked by the cruelties of a rich man, named Damophilus, and his wife, who were ma.s.sacred with circ.u.mstances of great atrocity; but the slaves preserved their daughter entirely unharmed, for she had always made it her business to console them in their sorrow, and she had won the love of all.
(Diodor. Sic. _Frag._ x.x.xiv.) So, too, Marcia, the wife of Cato, used to suckle her young slaves from her breast. (Plut. _Marc.
Cato_.) I may add the well-known sentiment which Virgil puts in the mouth of Dido: "Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco." There are, doubtless, many other touches of the same kind in ancient literature, some of which may occur to my readers.
777 Theodoret, v. 19.
778 See the beautiful description of the functions of a Christian woman in the second book of Tertullian, _Ad Uxorem_.
779 See, upon the deaconesses, Bingham's _Christian Antiquities_, book ii. ch. 22, and Ludlow's _Woman's Work in the Church_. The latter author argues elaborately that the "widows" were not the same as the deaconesses.
780 Phbe (Rom. xvi. 1) is described as a d???????.
781 A very able writer, who takes on the whole an unfavourable view of the influence of Christianity on legislation, says: "The provision for the widow was attributable to the exertions of the Church, which never relaxed its solicitude for the interests of wives surviving their husbands, winning, perhaps, one of the most arduous of its triumphs when, after exacting for two or three centuries an express promise from the husband at marriage to endow his wife, it at last succeeded in engrafting the principle of dower on the customary law of all Western Europe."-Maine's _Ancient Law_, p. 224.
782 See Troplong, _Influence du Christianisme sur le Droit_, pp.
308-310.
783 The results of this change have been treated by Miss Parkes in her truly admirable little book called _Essays on Woman's Work_, better than by any other writer with whom I am acquainted.