Читать книгу Woman under socialism - August Bebel - Страница 10

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The opposite of polygamy,—as we have learned to know it among Oriental peoples, and as it still exists among them, but owing to the number of available women and the cost of their support, can be indulged in only by the privileged and the rich—is polyandry. The latter exists mainly among the highland people of Thibet, among the Garras on the Hindoo-Chinese frontier, among the Baigas in Godwana, the Nairs in the southern extremity of India; it is said to be found also among the Eskimos and Aleutians. Heredity is determined in the only way possible,—after the mother: the children belong to her. The husbands of a woman are usually brothers. When the elder brother marries, the other brothers likewise become the husbands of the woman; the woman, however, preserves the right to take other men besides. Conversely, the men also are said to have the right of taking a second, third, fourth, or more wives. To what circumstances polyandry owes its origin is not yet clear. Seeing that the polyandrous nations, without exception, live either on high mountain regions, or in the cold zone, polyandry probably owes its existence to a phenomenon that Tarnowsky comments on.[22] He learned from reliable travelers that a long sojourn at high elevations lowers the sensuous pleasures, and weakens erection, both of which return with new vigor by re-descension to lower altitudes. This lowering of the sexual powers, Tarnowsky is of the opinion, might partly account for the comparative slight increase of population on highland regions; and he is of the opinion that, when the debility is transmitted, it may become a source of degeneration that operates upon the perversity of the sexual sense.

We may also add that a protracted domicile, together with the habits of life contracted on very high or cold regions, may have for a further result that polyandry lays no excessive demands upon a woman. The women themselves are correspondingly affected in their nature. That they are so is rendered probable by the circumstance that, among the Eskimo girls, menstruation sets in only with the nineteenth year, whereas in the warm zones it sets in as early as the tenth or eleventh, and in the temperate latitudes between the fourteenth and the sixteenth year. In view of the fact that warm climates, as universally recognized, exercise a strongly stimulating influence upon the sexual instinct,—whence polygamy finds its widest diffusion in warm countries—it is quite likely that cold regions—to which high mountains and plateaus belong, and where the thinner air may also contribute its share—may exercise materially a restringent effect upon the sexual instinct. It must, moreover, be noted that experience shows conception occurs rarer with women who cohabit with several men. The increase of population is, accordingly, slight under polyandry; and it fits in with the difficulty of securing subsistence, encountered in cold lands and mountain regions;—whereby additional proof is furnished that also, in this, to us so seemingly strange phenomenon of polyandry, production has its determining influence upon the relations of the sexes. Finally, it is to be ascertained whether among these peoples, who live on high mountains or in cold zones, the killing of girl babies is not a frequent practice, as is oft reported of the Mongolian tribes, on the highlands of China.

Exactly the reverse of the custom among the Romans during the Empire, of allowing celibacy and childlessness to gain the upper hand, was the custom prevalent among the Jews. True enough, the Jewish woman had no right to choose; her father fixed upon the husband she was to wed; but marriage was a duty, that they religiously followed. The Talmud advises: "When your daughter is of marriageable age, give his freedom to one of your slaves and engage her to him." In the same sense the Jews followed strictly the command of their God: "Increase and multiply." Due to this, and despite all persecutions and oppression, they have diligently increased their numbers. The Jew is the sworn enemy of Malthusianism.

Already Tacitus says of them: "Among themselves there is a stubborn holding together, and ready open-handedness; but, for all others, hostile hatred. Never do they eat, never do they sleep with foes; and, although greatly inclined to sensuousness, they abstain from procreation with foreign women. Nevertheless they strive to increase their people. Infanticide is held a sin with them; and the souls of those who die in battle or by execution they consider immortal. Hence the love of procreation beside their contempt of death." Tacitus hated and abhorred the Jews, because, in contempt of the religion of their fathers, they heaped up wealth and treasures. He called them the "worst set of people," an "ugly race."[23]

Under the over-lordship of the Romans, the Jews drew ever closer together. Under the long period of sufferings, which, from that time on, they had to endure, almost throughout the whole of the Christian Middle Ages, grew that intimate family life that is to-day considered a sort of pattern by the modern bourgeois regime. On the other side, Roman society underwent the process of disintegration and dissolution, which led the Empire to its destruction. Upon the excesses, bordering on insanity, followed the other extreme,—the most rigid abstinence. As excess, in former days, now asceticism assumed religious forms. A dream-land-fanaticism made propaganda for it. The unbounded gluttony and luxury of the ruling classes stood in glaring contrast with the want and misery of the millions upon millions that conquering Rome dragged, from all the then known countries of the world, into Italy and slavery. Among these were also numberless women, who, separated from their domestic hearths, from their parents or their husbands, and torn from their children, felt their misery most keenly, and yearned for deliverance. A large number of Roman women, disgusted at that which happened all around them, found themselves in similar frame of mind; any change in their condition seemed to them a relief. A deep longing for a change, for deliverance, took possession of extensive social layers;—and the deliverer seemed to approach. The conquest of Jerusalem and of the Jewish kingdom by the Romans had for its consequence the destruction of all national independence, and begot among the ascetic sects of that country, dreamers, who announced the birth of a new kingdom, that was to bring freedom and happiness to all.

Christ came, and Christianity arose. It embodied the opposition to the bestial materialism that reigned among the great and the rich of the Roman Empire; it represented the revolt against the contempt for and oppression of the masses. But originating in Judaism, which knew woman only as a being bereft of all rights, and biased by the Biblical conception which saw in her the source of all evil, Christianity preached contempt for woman. It also preached abstinence, the mortification of the flesh, then so sinful, and it pointed with its ambiguous phrases to a prospective kingdom, which some interpreted as of heaven, others as of earth, and which was to bring freedom and justice to all. With these doctrines it found fertile ground in the submerged bottom of the Roman Empire. Woman, hoping, along with all the miserable, for freedom and deliverance from her condition, joined readily and zealously. Down to our own days, never yet was a great and important movement achieved in the world without women also having been conspicuously active as combatants and martyrs. Those who praise Christianity as a great achievement of civilization should not forget that it was woman in particular to whom Christianity owes a great part of its success. Her proselyting zeal played a weighty role in the Roman Empire, as well as among the barbarous peoples of the Middle Ages. The mightiest were by her converted to Christianity. It was Clotilde, for instance, who moved Clovis, the King of the Franks, to accept Christianity; it was, again, Bertha, Queen of Kent, and Gisela, Queen of Hungary, who introduced Christianity in their countries. To the influence of the women is due the conversion of many of the great. But Christianity requited woman ill. Its tenets breathe the same contempt for woman that is breathed in all the religions of the East. It orders her to be the obedient servant of her husband, and the vow of obedience she must, to this day, make to him at the altar.

Let us hear the Bible and Christianity speak of woman and marriage. The ten commandments are addressed only to the men; in the tenth commandment woman is bracketed with servants and domestic animals. Man is warned not to covet his neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his. Woman, accordingly, appears as an object, as a piece of property, that the man may not hanker after, if in another's possession. Jesus, who belonged to a sect—the sect which imposed upon itself strict asceticism and even self-emasculation[24]—being asked by his disciples whether it is good to marry, answers: "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men; and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake."[25] Emasculation is, according hereto, an act hallowed by God, and the renunciation of love and marriage a good deed.

Paul, who, in a higher degree than even Jesus himself, may be called the founder of the Christian religion; Paul, who first impressed an international character upon this creed, and tore it away from the narrow sectarianism of the Jews, writes to the Corinthians: "Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman;" "he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better."[26] "Walk in the Spirit and fulfil not the lust of the flesh, for the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh;" "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts."" He followed his own precepts, and did not marry. This hatred of the flesh is the hatred of woman, but also the fear of woman, who—see the scene in Paradise—is represented as the seducer of man. In this spirit did the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church preach; in this spirit did the Church work throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, when it reared its cloisters, and introduced celibacy among the priesthood;—and to this day it works in the same spirit.

According to Christianity, woman is the unclean being; the seducer, who introduced sin into the world and ruined man. Hence Apostles, and Fathers of the Church alike, have ever looked upon marriage as a necessary evil,—the same as is said to-day of prostitution. Tertulian exclaims: "Woman, thou should ever walk in mourning and rags, thy eyes full of tears, present the aspect of repentance to induce forgetfulness of your having ruined the human race. Woman, thou art the Gate of Hell!" Hieronymus says: "Marriage always is a vice; all that we can do is to excuse and cleanse it," hence it was made a sacrament of the Church. Origen declares: "Marriage is something unholy and unclean, a means for sensuality," and, in order to resist the temptation, he emasculated himself. Tertulian declares: "Celibacy is preferable, even if the human race goes to ground." Augustine teaches: "The celibates will shine in heaven like brilliant stars, while their parents (who brought them forth) are like dark stars." Eusebius and Hieronymus agree that the Biblical command, "Increase and multiply," no longer fits the times, and does not concern the Christians. Hundreds of other quotations from the most influential Fathers of the Church could be cited, all of which tend in the same direction. By means of their continuous teaching and preaching, they have spread those unnatural views touching sexual matters, and the intercourse of the sexes, the latter of which, nevertheless, remains a commandment of nature, and obedience to which is one of the most important duties in the mission of life. Modern society is still severely ailing from these teachings, and it is recovering but slowly.

Peter calls out emphatically to women: "Ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands."[27] Paul writes to the Ephesians: "The husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the Church;"[28] and in Corinthians: "Man is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man."[29] According to which every sot of a man may hold himself better than the most distinguished woman;—indeed, it is so in practice to-day. Also against the higher education of women does Paul raise his weighty voice: "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, out to be in silence;"[30] and again: "Let your women keep silence in the churches; for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home; for it is a shame for women to speak in the church."[31]

Such doctrines are not peculiar to Christianity only. Christianity being a mixture of Judaism and Greek philosophy, and seeing that these, in turn, have their roots in the older civilization of the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Hindoos, the subordinate position that Christianity assigned to woman was one common in antiquity. In the Hindoo laws of Manu it is said regarding woman: "The source of dishonor is woman; the source of strife is woman; the source of earthly existence is woman; therefore avoid woman." Beside this degradation of woman, fear of her ever and anon reappears naively. Manu further sets forth: "Woman is by nature ever inclined to tempt man; hence a man should not sit in a secluded place even with his nearest female relative." Woman, accordingly, is, according to the Hindoo as well as the Old Testament and Christian view, everywhere the tempter. All masterhood implies the degradation of the mastered. The subordinate position of woman continues, to this day, even more in force in the backward civilization of the East than among the nations that enjoy a so-called Christian view-point. That which, in the so-called Christian world, gradually improved the situation of woman was, not Christianity, but the advanced culture of the West struggling against the Christian doctrine.

Christianity is guiltless of woman's present improved position to what it was at the start of the era. Only reluctantly, and forced thereto, did Christianity become untrue to its true spirit with regard to woman. Those who rave about "the mission of Christianity to emancipate mankind," differ from us in this, as in other respects. They claim that Christianity freed woman from her previous low position, and they ground themselves upon the worship of Mary, the "mother of God,"—a cult, however, that sprang up only later in Christendom, but which they point to as a sign of regard for the whole sex. The Roman Catholic Church, which celebrates this cult, should 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 VII[32]—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 free communities declined. The victorious army-commanders utilized their power to appropriate large territories unto themselves; they considered themselves masters of the common property, which they distributed among their devoted retinue—slaves, serfs, freedmen, generally of foreign descent,—for a term of years, or with the right of inheritance. They thus furnished themselves with a court and military nobility, in all things devoted to their will. The establishment of the large Empire of the Franks finally put an end to the last vestiges of the old gentile constitution. In the place of the former councils of chiefs, now stood the lieutenants of the army and of the newly formed nobility.

Gradually, the mass of the freemen, members of the once free communities, lapsed into exhaustion and poverty, due to the continuous wars of conquest and the strifes among the great, whose burdens they had to bear. They could no longer meet the obligation of furnishing the army requisitions. In lieu thereof, Princes and high nobility secured servants, while the peasants placed themselves and their property under the protection of some temporal or spiritual lord—the Church had managed, within but few centuries, to become a great power—wherefor they paid rent and tribute. Thus the thitherto free peasant's estate was transformed into hired property; and this, with time, was burdened with ever more obligations. Once landed in this state of dependence, it was not long before the peasant lost his personal freedom also. In this way dependence and serfdom spread ever more.

The landlord possessed the almost absolute right of disposal over his serfs and dependents. He had the right, as soon as a male reached his eighteenth year, or the female her fourteenth, to compel their marriage. He could assign a woman to a man, and a man to a woman. He enjoyed the same right over widows and widowers. In his attribute of lord over his subjects, he also considered the sexual use of his female serfs and dependents to be at his own disposal,—a power that finds its expression in the "jus primae noctis" (the right of the first night). This right also belonged to his representative, the stewart, unless, upon the payment of a tribute, the exercise of the right was renounced. The very names of the tribute betray its nature.[37]

It is extensively disputed that this "right of the first night" ever existed. The "right of the first night" is quite a thorn in the side of certain folks, for the reason that the right was still exercised at an age, that they love to hold up as a model,—a genuine model of morality and piety. It has been pointed out how this "right of the first night" was the rudiment of a custom, that hung together with the age of the mother-right, when all the women were the wives of all the men of a class. With the disappearance of the old family organization, the custom survived in the surrender of the bride, on the wedding night, to the men of her own community. But, in the course of time, the right is ever more restricted, and finally falls to the chief of the tribe, or to the priest, as a religious act, to be exercised by them alone. The feudal lord assumes the right as a consequence of his power over the person who belongs to the land, and which is his property; and he exercises the right if he wills, or relinquishes it in lieu of a tribute in products or money. How real was the "right of the first night" appears from Jacob Grimm's "Weisthumer."[38]

Sugenheim[39] says the "jus primae noctis," as a right appertaining to the landlords, originates in that his consent to marriage was necessary. Out of this right there arose in Bearn the usage that all the first-born of marriages, in which the "jus primae noctis" was exercised, were of free rank. Later, the right was generally redeemable by a tribute. According to Sugenheim, those who held most stubbornly to the right were the Bishops of Amiens; it lasted with them till the beginning of the fifteenth century. In Scotland the right was declared redeemable by King Malcolm III, towards the end of the eleventh century; in Germany, however, it continued in force much longer. According to the archives of a Swabian cloister, Adelberg, for the year 1496, the serfs, located at Boertlingen, had to redeem the right by the bridegroom's giving a cake of salt, and the bride paying one pound seven shillings, or with a pan, "in which she can sit with her buttocks." In other places the bridegrooms had to deliver to the landlord for ransom as much cheese or butter "as their buttocks were thick and heavy." In still other places they had to give a handsome cordovan tarbouret "that they could just fill."[40] According to the accounts given by the Bavarian Judge of the Supreme Court of Appeals, Welsch, the obligation to redeem the "jus primae noctis" existed in Bavaria as late as the eighteenth century.[41] Furthermore, Engels reports that, among the Welsh and the Scots, the "right of the first night" prevailed throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, with the difference only that, due to the continuance of the gentile organization, it was not the landlord, or his representative, but the chief of the clan, as the last representative of the one-time husbands in common, who exercised the right, in so far as it was not redeemed.

There is, accordingly, no doubt whatever that the so-called "right of the first night" existed, not only during the whole of the Middle Ages, but continued even down to modern days, and played its role under the code of feudalism. In Poland, the noblemen arrogated the right to deflower any maid they pleased, and a hundred lashes were given him who complained. That the sacrifice of maidenly honor seems even to-day a matter of course to landlords and their officials in the country, transpires, not only in Germany, oftener than one imagines, but it is a frequent occurrence all over the East and South of Europe, as is asserted by experts in countries and the peoples.

In the days of feudalism, marriage was a matter of interest to the landlord. The children that sprang therefrom entered into the same relation of subjection to him as their parents; the labor-power at his disposal increased in numbers, his income rose. Hence spiritual and temporal landlords favored marriage among their vassals. The matter lay otherwise, particularly for the Church, if, by the prevention of marriage, the prospect existed of bringing land into the possession of the Church by testamentary bequests. This, however, occurred only with the lower ranks of freemen, whose condition, due to the circumstances already mentioned, became ever more precarious, and who, listening to religious suggestions and superstition, relinquished their property to the Church in order to find protection and peace behind the walls of a cloister. Others, again, placed themselves under the protection of the Church, in consideration of the payment of duties, and the rendering of services. Frequently their descendants fell on this route a prey to the very fate which their ancestors had sought to escape. They either gradually became Church dependents, or were turned into novices for the cloisters.

The towns, which, since the eleventh century were springing up, then had at that time a lively interest in promoting the increase of population; settlement in them and marriage were made as easy as possible. The towns became especially asylums for countrymen, fleeing from unbearable oppression, and for fugitive serfs and dependents. Later, however, matters changed. So soon as the towns had acquired power, and contained a well-organized body of the trades, hostility arose against new immigrants, mostly propertyless peasants, who wanted to settle as handicraftsmen. Inconvenient competitors were scented in these. The barriers raised against immigration were multiplied. High settlement fees, expensive examinations, limitations of a trade to a certain number of masters and apprentices,—all this condemned thousands to pauperism, to a life of celibacy, and to vagabondage. When, in the course of the sixteenth century, and for reasons to be mentioned later, the flower-time of the towns was passing away, and their decline had set in, the narrow horizon of the time caused the impediments to settlement and independence to increase still more. Other circumstances also contributed their demoralizing effect.

The tyranny of the landlords increased so mightily from decade to decade that many of the vassals preferred to exchange their sorrowful life for the trade of the tramp or the highwayman,—an occupation that was greatly aided by the thick woods and the poor condition of the roads. Or, invited by the many violent disturbances of the time, they became soldiers, who sold themselves where the price was highest, or the booty seemed most promising. An extensive male and female slum-proletariat came into existence, and became a plague to the land. The Church contributed faithfully to the general depravity. Already, in the celibatic state of the priesthood there was a main-spring for the fostering of sexual excesses; these were still further promoted through the continuous intercourse kept up with Italy and Rome.

Rome was not merely the capital of Christendom, as the residence of the Papacy. True to its antecedents during the heathen days of the Empire, Rome had become the new Babel, the European High School of immorality; and the Papal court was its principal seat. With its downfall, the Roman Empire had bequeathed all its vices to Christian Europe. These vices were particularly nursed in Italy, whence, materially aided by the intercourse of the priesthood with Rome, they crowded into Germany. The uncommonly large number of priests, to a great extent vigorous men, whose sexual wants were intensified by a lazy and luxurious life, and who, through compulsory celibacy, were left to illegitimate or unnatural means of gratification, carried immorality into all circles of society. This priesthood became a sort of pest-like danger to the morals of the female sex in the towns and villages. Monasteries and nunneries—and their number was legion—were not infrequently distinguishable from public houses only in that the life led in them was more unbridled and lascivious, and in that numerous crimes, especially infanticide, could be more easily concealed, seeing that in the cloisters only they exercised the administration of justice who led in the wrong-doing. Often did peasants seek to safeguard wife and daughter from priestly seduction by accepting none as a spiritual shepherd who did not bind himself to keep a concubine;—a circumstance that led a Bishop of Constance to impose a "concubine tax" upon the priests of his diocese. Such a condition of things explains the historically attested fact, that during the Middle Ages—pictured to us by silly romanticists as so pious and moral—not less than 1500 strolling women turned up in 1414, at the Council of Constance.

But these conditions came in by no means with the decline of the Middle Ages. They began early, and gave continuous occasion for complaints and decrees. In 802 Charles the Great issued one of these, which ran this wise: "The cloisters of nuns shall be strictly watched; the nuns may not roam about; they shall be kept with great diligence; neither shall they live in strife and quarrel with one another; they shall in no wise be disobedient to their Superiors or Abbesses, or cross the will of these. Wherever they are placed under the rules of a cloister they are to observe them throughout. Not whoring, not drunkenness, not covetousness shall they be the ministrants of, but in all ways lead just and sober lives. Neither shall any man enter their cloisters, except to attend mass, and he shall immediately depart." A regulation of the year 869 provided: "If priests keep several women, or shed the blood of Christians or heathens, or break the canonical law, they shall be deprived of their priesthood, because they are worse than laymen." The fact that the possession of several women was forbidden in those days only to the priests, indicates that marriage with several wives was no rare occurrence in the ninth century. In fact, there were no laws forbidding it.

Aye, and even later, at the time of the Minnesaenger, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the possession of several wives was considered in order.[42]

The position of woman was aggravated still more by the circumstance that, along with all the impediments which gradually made marriage and settlement harder, their number materially exceeded that of the men. As special reasons herefor are to be considered the numerous wars and feuds, together with the perilousness of commercial voyages of those days. Furthermore, mortality among men was higher, as the result of habitual excesses and drunkenness. The predisposition to sickness and death that flowed from such habits of life, manifested itself strongly in the numerous pest-like diseases that raged during the Middle Ages. In the interval between 1326 to 1400, there were thirty-two; from 1400 to 1500, forty-one; and from 1500 to 1600, thirty years of pestilence.[43]

Swarms of women roamed along the highways as jugglers, singers and players in the company of strolling students and clericals; they flooded the fairs and markets; they were to be found wherever large crowds gathered, or festivals were celebrated. In the regiments of foot-soldiers they constituted separate divisions, with their own sergeants. There, and quite in keeping with the guild character of the age, they were assigned to different duties, according to looks and age; and, under severe penalties, were not allowed to prostitute themselves to any man outside of their own branch. In the camps, they had to fetch hay, straw and wood; fill up trenches and ponds; and attend to the cleaning of the place along with the baggage lads. In sieges, they had to fill up the ditches with brushwood, lumber and faggots in order to help the storming of the place. They assisted in placing the field pieces in position; and when these stuck in the bottomless roads, they had to give a hand in pulling them out again.[44]

In order to counteract somewhat the misery of this crowd of helpless women, so-called "Bettinen houses" were instituted in many cities, and placed under municipal supervision. Sheltered in these establishments, the women were held to the observance of a decent life. But neither these establishments, nor the numerous nunneries, were able to receive all that applied for succor.

The difficulties in the way of marriage; the tours undertaken by Princes, and by temporal and spiritual magnates, who with their retinues of knights and bondmen, visited the cities; even the male youth of the cities themselves, the married men not excluded, who, buoyant with life and unaffected by scruples, sought change in pleasures;—all this produced as early as in the Middle Ages the demand for prostitution. As every trade was in those days organized and regulated, and could not exist without a guild, it so was with prostitution also. In all large cities there were "houses of women"—municipal, prince or Church regalities—the net profits of which flowed into the corresponding treasuries. The women in these houses had a "head-mistress," elected by themselves, who was to keep discipline and order, and whose special duty it was to diligently watch that non-guild competitors, the "interlopers," did not injure the legitimate trade. When caught, these were condignly punished. The inmates of one of these houses for women, located in Nuerenberg, complained with the Magistrate, that "other inn-keepers also kept women, who walked the streets at night, and took in married and other men, and that these plied (the trade) to such an extent, and so much more brazenly, than they did themselves in the municipal (guild) girls-house, that it was a pity and a shame to see such things happen in this worthy city."[45] These "houses for women" enjoyed special protection; disturbances of the peace in their neighborhood were fined twice as heavily. The female guild members also had the right to take their place in the processions and festivals, at which, as is known, the guilds always assisted. Not infrequently were they also drawn in as guests at the tables of Princes and Municipal Councilmen. The "houses of women" were considered serviceable for the "protection of marriage and of the honor of the maidens,"—the identical reasoning with which State brothels were justified in Athens, and even to-day prostitution is excused. All the same, there were not wanting violent persecutions of the filles de joie, proceeding from the identical male circles who supported them with their custom and their money. The Emperor Charlemagne decreed that prostitutes shall be dragged naked to the market place and there whipped; and yet, he himself, "the Most Christian King and Emperor," had not less than six wives at a time; and neither were his daughters, who followed their father's example, by any means paragons of virtue. They prepared for him in the course of their lives many an unpleasant hour, and brought him home several illegitimate children. Alkuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne, warned his pupils against "the crowned doves, who flew at night over the palatinate," and he meant thereby the daughters of the Emperor.

The identical communities, that officially organized the brothel system, that took it under their protection, and that granted all manner of privileges to the "priestesses of Venus," had the hardest and most cruel punishment in reserve for the poor and forsaken Magdalen. The female infanticide, who, driven by desperation, killed the fruit of her womb, was, as a rule, sentenced to suffer the most cruel death penalty; nobody bothered about the unconscionable seducer himself. Perchance he even sat on the Judge's bench, which decreed the sentence of death upon the poor victim. The same happens to-day.[46] Likewise was adultery by the wife punished most severely; she was certain of the pillory, at least; but over the adultery of the husband the mantle of Christian charity was thrown.

In Wuerzburg, during the Middle Ages, the keeper of women swore before the Magistrate: "To be true and good to the city, and to procure women." Similarly in Nuerenberg, Ulm, Leipsic, Cologne, Frankfurt and elsewhere. In Ulm, where the "houses of women" were abolished in 1537, the guilds moved in 1551 that they be restored "in order to avoid worse disorders." Distinguished foreigners were provided with filles de joie at the expense of the city. When King Ladislaus entered Vienna in 1452, the Magistrate sent to meet him a deputation of public girls, who, clad only in light gauze, revealed the handsomest shapes. At his entry into Brugges, the Emperor Charles V was likewise greeted by a deputation of naked girls. Such occurrences met not with objection in those days.

Imaginative romancers, together with calculating people, have endeavored to represent the Middle Ages as particularly "moral," and animated with a veritable worship for woman. The period of the Minnesangers—from the twelfth to the fourteenth century—contributed in giving a color to the pretence. The knightly "Minnedienst" (service of love) which the French, Italian and German knights first became acquainted with among the Moriscos of Spain, is cited as evidence concerning the high degree of respect in which woman was held at that time. But there are several things to be kept in mind. In the first place, the knights constituted but a trifling percentage of the population, and, proportionately, the knights' women of the women in general; in the second place, only a very small portion of the knights exercised the so-called "Minnedienst;" thirdly, the true nature of this service is grossly misunderstood, or has been intentionally misrepresented. The age in which the "Minnedienst" flourished was at the same time the age of the grossest right-of-the-fist in Germany,—an age when all bonds of order were dissolved; and the knights indulged themselves without restraint in waylaying of travelers, robbery and incendiarism. Such days of brutal force are not the days in which mild and poetic sentiments are likely to prevail to any perceptible extent. The contrary is true. This period contributed to destroy whatever regard possibly existed for the female sex. The knights, both of country and town, consisted mainly of rough, dissolute fellows, whose principal passion, besides feuds and guzzling, was the unbridled gratification of sexual cravings. The chronicles of the time do not tire of telling about the deeds of rapine and violence, that the nobility was guilty of, particularly in the country, but in the cities also, where, appearing in patrician role, the nobility held in its hands the city regiment, down to the thirteenth, and partly even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor did the wronged have any means of redress; in the city, the squires (yunker) controlled the judges' bench; in the country, the landlord, invested with criminal jurisdiction, was the knight, the Abbot or the Bishop. Accordingly, it is a violent exaggeration that, amid such morals and customs, the nobility and rulers had a particular respect for their wives and daughters, and carried them on their hands as a sort of higher beings, let alone that they cultivated such respect for the wives and daughters of the townsmen and peasants, for whom both the temporal and the spiritual masters entertained and proclaimed contempt only.

A very small minority of knights consisted of sincere worshippers of female beauty, but their worship was by no means Platonic; it pursued quite material ends. And these material ends were pursued by those also with whom Christian mysticism, coupled with natural sensuousness, made a unique combination. Even that harlequin among the worshippers of "lovely women," Ulrich von Lichtenstein, of laughable memory, remained Platonic only so long as he had to. At bottom the "Minnedienst" was the apotheosis of the best beloved—at the expense of the own wife; a sort of hetairism, carried over into Middle Age Christianity, as it existed in Greece at the time of Pericles. In point of fact, during the Middle Ages, the mutual seduction of one another's wives was a "Minnedienst" strongly in vogue among the knights, just the same as, in certain circles of our own bourgeoisie, similar performances are now repeated. That much for the romanticism of the Middle Ages and their regard for women.

There can be no doubt that, in the open recognition of the pleasures of the senses, there lay in that age the acknowledgment that the natural impulses, implanted in every healthy and ripe human being, are entitled to be satisfied. In so far there lay in the demonstration a victory of vigorous nature over the asceticism of Christianity. On the other hand, it must be noted that the recognition and satisfaction fell to the share of only one sex, while the other sex, on the contrary, was treated as if it could not and should not have the same impulses; the slightest transgression of the laws of morality prescribed by man, was severely punished. The narrow and limited horizon, within which moved the citizen of the Middle Ages, caused him to adopt narrow and limited measures also with respect to the position of woman. And, as a consequence of continued oppression and peculiar education, woman herself has so completely adapted herself to her master's habits and system of thought, that she finds her condition natural and proper.

Do we not know that there have been millions of slaves who found slavery natural, and never would have freed themselves, had their liberators not risen from the midst of the class of the slave-holders? Did not Prussian peasants, when, as a result of the Stein laws, they were to be freed from serfdom, petition to be left as they were, "because who was to take care of them when they fell sick?" And is it not similarly with the modern Labor Movement? How many workingmen do not allow themselves to be influenced and led without a will of their own?

The oppressed needs the stimulator and firer, because he lacks the independence and faculty for initiative. It was so with the modern proletarian movement; it is so also in the struggle for the emancipation of woman, which is intimately connected with that of the proletariat. Even in the instance of the comparatively favorably situated bourgeois of old, noble and clerical advocates broke the way open for him to conduct his battle for freedom.

However numerous the shortcomings of the Middle Ages, there was then a healthy sensualism, that sprang from a rugged and happy native disposition among the people, and that Christianity was unable to suppress. The hypocritical prudery and bashfulness; the secret lustfulness, prevalent to-day, that hesitates and balks at calling things by their right name, and to speak about natural things in a natural way;—all that was foreign to the Middle Ages. Neither was that age familiar with the piquant double sense, in which, out of defective naturalness and out of a prudery that has become morality, things that may not be clearly uttered, are veiled, and are thereby rendered all the more harmful; such a language incites but does not satisfy; it suggests but does not speak out. Our social conversation, our novels and our theatres are full of these piquant equivoques,—and their effect is visible. This spiritualism, which is not the spiritualism of the transcendental philosopher, but that of the roue, and that hides itself behind the spiritualism of religion, has great power to-day.

The healthy sensualism of the Middle Ages found in Luther its classic interpreter. We have here to do, not so much with the religious reformer, as with Luther the man. On the human side, Luther's robust primeval nature stepped forward unadulterated; it compelled him to express his appetite for love and enjoyment forcibly and without reserve. His position, as former Roman Catholic clergyman, had opened his eyes. By personal practice, so to speak, had he learned the unnaturalness of the life led by the monks and nuns. Hence the warmth with which he warred against clerical and monastic celibacy. His words hold good to this day, for all those who believe they may sin against nature, and imagine they can reconcile with their conceptions of morality and propriety, governmental and social institutions that prevent millions from fulfilling their natural mission. Luther says: "Woman, except as high and rare grace, can dispense with man as little as she can with food, sleep, water and other natural wants. Conversely, also, neither can man dispense with woman. The reason is this: It is as deeply implanted in nature to beget children as to eat and drink. Therefore did God furnish the body with members, veins, discharges and all that is needed therefor. He who will resist this, and prevent its going as Nature wills, what else does he but endeavor to resist Nature's being Nature, that fire burn, water wet, that man eat, drink or sleep?" And in his sermon on married life he says: "As little as it is in my power that I be not a man, just so little is it in your power to be without a man. For it is not a matter of free will or deliberation, but a necessary, natural matter that all that is male must have a wife, and what is female must have a husband." Luther did not speak in this energetic manner in behalf of married life and the necessity of sexual intercourse only; he also turns against the idea that marriage and Church have anything in common. In this he stood squarely on the ground of the olden days, which considered marriage an act of free will on the part of those who engaged in it, and that did not concern the Church. On this head he said: "Know, therefore, that marriage is an outside affair, as any other earthly act. The same as I am free to eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride, deal, speak and trade with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, likewise am I free to enter into and remain in wedlock with one of them. Turn your back upon the fool laws that forbid such a thing.... A heathen is a man and woman, created by God in perfect form, as well as St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Luke; be then silent for a loose and false Christian that you are." Luther, like other Reformers, pronounced himself against all limitation of marriage, and he was for also allowing the re-union of divorced couples, against which the Church was up in arms. He said: "As to the manner in which marriage and divorce are to be conducted among us, I claim that it should be made the business of the jurists, and placed under the jurisdiction of earthly concerns, because marriage is but an earthly and outside matter." It was in keeping with this view that, not until the close of the seventeenth century, was marriage by the Church made obligatory under Protestantism. Until then so-called "conscience marriage" held good, i. e., the simple mutual obligation to consider each other man and wife, and to mean to live in wedlock. Such a marriage was considered by German law to be legally entered into. Luther even went so far that he conceded to the unsatisfied party—even if that be the woman—the right to seek satisfaction outside of the marriage bonds "in order to satisfy nature, which cannot be crossed."[47] This conception of marriage is the same that prevailed in antiquity, and that came up later during the French Revolution. Luther here set up maxims that will arouse the strongest indignation of a large portion of our "respectable men and women," who, in their religious zeal, are so fond of appealing to him. In his treatise "On Married Life,"[48] he says: "If an impotent man falls to the lot of a hearty woman, and she still cannot openly take another, and does not wish to marry again, she shall say unto her husband: 'Lo, dear husband, thou shalt not be wronged by me. Thou hast deceived me and my young body, and hast therefore brought my honor and salvation into danger. There is no glory to God between us two. Grant me to cohabit secretly with thy brother or nearest friend, and thou shalt have the name, so that thy property come not to strange heirs; and allow thyself to be, in turn, willingly deceived by me, as thou did deceive me without thy will." The husband, Luther goes on to show, is in duty bound to grant the request. "If he declines, then has she the right to run away from him to another, and to woo elsewhere. Conversely, if a woman declines to exercise the conjugal duty, her husband has the right to cohabit with another, only he should tell her so beforehand."[49] It will be seen that these are wonderfully radical, and, in the eyes of our days, so rich in hypocritical prudery, even downright "immoral" views, that the great Reformer develops. Luther, however, expressed only that which, at the time, was the popular view.[50]

The passages quoted from the writings and addresses of Luther on marriage, are of special importance for the reason that these views are in strong contradiction with those that prevail to-day in the Church. In the struggle that it latterly has had to conduct with the clerical fraternity, the Social Democracy can appeal with full right to Luther, who takes on the question of marriage a stand free from all prejudice.

Luther and all the Reformers went even further in the marriage question, true enough, only for opportunist reasons, and out of complaisance towards the Princes whose strong support and permanent friendship they sought to secure and keep to the Reformation. The friendly Duke of Hessen, Philip I, had, besides his legitimate wife, a sweetheart, willing to yield to his wishes, but only under the condition that he marry her. It was a thorny problem. A divorce from the wife, in the absence of convincing reasons, would give great scandal; on the other hand, a marriage with two women at a time was an unheard of thing with a Christian Prince of modern days; it would give rise to no less a scandal. All this notwithstanding, Philip, in his passion, decided in favor of the latter step. The point was now to establish that the act did no violence to the Bible, and to secure the approval of the Reformers, especially of Luther and Melanchthon. The negotiations, set on foot by the Duke, began first with Butzer, who declared himself in favor of the plan, and promised to win over Luther and Melanchthon. Butzer justified his opinion with the argument: To possess several wives at once was not against the evangelium. St. Paul, who said much upon the subject of who was not to inherit the kingdom of God, made no mention of those who had two wives. St. Paul, on the contrary, said "that a Bishop was to have but one wife, the same with his servants; hence, if it had been compulsory that every man have but one wife he would have so ordered, and forbidden a plurality of wives." Luther and Melanchthon joined this reasoning, and gave their assent to double marriages, after the Duke's wife herself had consented to the marriage with the second wife under the condition "that he was to fulfil his marital duties towards her more than ever before."[51] The question of the justification of bigamy had before then—at the time when the issue was the consenting to the double marriage of Henry VIII of England—caused many a headache to Luther, as appears from a letter to the Chancellor of Saxony, Brink, dated January, 1524. Luther wrote to him that, in point of principle, he could not reject bigamy because it ran not counter to Holy Writ;[52] but that he held it scandalous when the same happened among Christians, "who should leave alone even things that are permissible." After the wedding of the Duke, which actually took place in March, 1540, and in answer to a letter of acknowledgment from him, Luther wrote (April 10): "That your Grace is happy on the score of our opinion, which we fain would see kept secret; else, even the rude peasants (in imitation of the Duke's example) might finally produce as strong, if not stronger, reasons, whereby we might then have much trouble on our hands."

Upon Melanchthon, the consent to the double marriage of the Duke must have been less hard. Before that, he had written to Henry VIII "every Prince has the right to introduce polygamy in his domains." But the double marriage of the Duke made such a great and unpleasant sensation, that, in 1541, he circulated a treatise in which polygamy is defended as no transgression against Holy Writ.[53] People were not then living in the ninth or twelfth century, when polygamy was tolerated without shocking society. Social conditions had very materially changed in the meantime; in a great measure the mark had had to yield to the power of the nobility and the clergy; it had even extensively disappeared, and was further uprooted after the unhappy issue of the Peasant Wars. Private property had become the general foundation of society. Beside the rural population, that cultivated the soil, a strong, self-conscious handicraft element had arisen, and was dominated by the interests of its own station. Commerce had assumed large dimensions, and had produced a merchant class, which, what with the splendor of its outward position and its wealth, awoke the envy and hostility of a nobility that was sinking ever deeper into poverty and licentiousness. The burghers' system of private property had triumphed everywhere, as was evidenced by the then universal introduction of the Roman law; the contrasts between the classes were palpable, and everywhere did they bump against one another. Monogamy became, under such conditions, the natural basis for the sexual relations; a step such as taken by the Duke of Hessen now did violence to the ruling morals and customs, which, after all, are but the form of expression of the economic conditions that happen at the time to prevail. On the other hand, society came to terms with prostitution, as a necessary accompaniment of monogamy, and an institution supplemental thereto;—and tolerated it.