History of European Morals From Augustus to Charlemagne Volume II Part 34

Condemnation of transitory connections, 350.

Roman concubines, 351.

The sinfulness of divorce maintained by the Church, 350-353.

Abolition of compulsory marriages, 353.

Condemnation of mixed marriages, 353, 354.

Education of women, 355.

Relation of Christianity to the female virtues, 358.

Comparison of male and female characteristics, 358.

The Pagan and Christian ideal of woman contrasted, 361-363.

Conspicuous part of woman in the early Church, 363-365.

Care of widows, 367.

Worship of the Virgin, 368, 369.

Effect of the suppression of the conventual system on women, 369.

Revolution going on in the employments of women, 373

Xenocrates, his tenderness, ii. 163

Xenophanes, his scepticism, i. 162

Xenophon, his picture of Greek married life, ii. 288

Zadok, the founder of the Sadducees, i. 183, _note_

Zeno, vast place occupied by his system in the moral history of man, i.

171.

His suicide, 212.

His inculcation of the practice of self-examination, 248

Zeus, universal providence attributed by the Greeks to, i. 161

FOOTNOTES

1 There is a remarkable pa.s.sage of Celsus, on the impossibility of restoring a nature once thoroughly depraved, quoted by Origen in his answer to him.

2 This is well shown by Pressense in his _Hist. des Trois premiers Siecles_.

3 See a great deal of information on this subject in Bingham's _Antiquities of the Christian Church_ (Oxford, 1853), vol. v. pp.

370-378. It is curious that those very noisy contemporary divines who profess to resuscitate the manners of the primitive Church, and who lay so much stress on the minutest ceremonial observances, have left unpractised what was undoubtedly one of the most universal, and was believed to be one of the most important, of the inst.i.tutions of early Christianity. Bingham shows that the administration of the Eucharist to infants continued in France till the twelfth century.

4 See Cave's _Primitive Christianity_, part i. ch. xi. At first the Sacrament was usually received every day; but this custom soon declined in the Eastern Church, and at last pa.s.sed away in the West.

5 Plin. _Ep._ x. 97.

6 The whole subject of the penitential discipline is treated minutely in Marshall's _Penitential Discipline of the Primitive Church_ (first published in 1714, and reprinted in the library of Anglo-Catholic Theology), and also in Bingham, vol. vii. Tertullian gives a graphic description of the public penances, _De Pudicit._ v.

13.

7 Eusebius, _H. E._ viii, 7.

8 St. Chrysostom tells this of St. Babylas. See Tillemont, _Mem. pour servir a l'Hist. eccl._ tome iii. p. 403.

9 In the preface to a very ancient Milanese missal it is said of St.

Agatha that as she lay in the prison cell, torn by the instruments of torture, St. Peter came to her in the form of a Christian physician, and offered to dress her wounds; but she refused, saying that she wished for no physician but Christ. St. Peter, in the name of that Celestial Physician, commanded her wounds to close, and her body became whole as before. (Tillemont, tome iii. p. 412.)

10 See her acts in Ruinart.

11 St. Jerome, _Ep._ x.x.xix.

12 "Definitio brevis et vera virtutis: ordo est amoris."-_De Civ. Dei_, xv. 22.

13 Besides the obvious points of resemblance in the common, though not universal, belief that Christians should abstain from all weapons and from all oaths, the whole teaching of the early Christians about the duty of simplicity, and the wickedness of ornaments in dress (see especially the writings of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Chrysostom, on this subject), is exceedingly like that of the Quakers. The scruple of Tertullian (_De Corona_) about Christians wearing laurel wreaths in the festivals, because laurel was called after Daphne, the lover of Apollo, was much of the same kind as that which led the Quakers to refuse to speak of Tuesday or Wednesday, lest they should recognise the G.o.ds Tuesco or Woden. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical aspects and the sacramental doctrines of the Church were the extreme opposites of Quakerism.

14 See the masterly description of the relations of the English to the Irish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in Froude's _History of England_, ch. xxiv.; and also Lord Macaulay's description of the feelings of the Master of Stair towards the Highlanders. (_History of England_, ch. xviii.)

15 See on the views of Aristotle, Labourt, _Recherches historiques sur les Enfanstrouves_ (Paris, 1848), p. 9.

16 See Gravina, _De Ortu et Progressu Juris Civilis_, lib. i. 44.

17 "Nunc uterum vitiat quae vult formosa videci, Raraque in hoc aevo est, quae velit esse parens."

Ovid, _De Nuce_, 22-23.

The same writer has devoted one of his elegies (ii. 14) to reproaching his mistress Corinna with having been guilty of this act. It was not without danger, and Ovid says,

"Saepe suos utero quae necit ipsa perit."

A niece of Domitian is said to have died in consequence of having, at the command of the emperor, practised it (Sueton. _Domit._ xxii.). Plutarch notices the custom (_De Sanitate tuenda_), and Seneca eulogises Helvia (_Ad Helv._ xvi.) for being exempt from vanity and having never destroyed her unborn offspring. Favorinus, in a remarkable pa.s.sage (Aulus Gellius, _Noct. Att._ xii. 1), speaks of the act as "publica detestatione communique odio dignum," and proceeds to argue that it is only a degree less criminal for mothers to put out their children to nurse. Juvenal has some well-known and emphatic lines on the subject:-

"Sed jacet aurato vix ulla puerpera lecto; Tantum artes hujus, tantum medicamina possunt, Quae steriles facit, atque homines in ventre necandos Conducit."

_Sat._ vi. 592-595.

There are also many allusions to it in the Christian writers. Thus Minucius Felix (_Octavius_, x.x.x.): "Vos enim video procreatos filios nunc feris et avibus exponere, nunc adstrangulatos misero mortis genere elidere. Sunt quae in ipsis visceribus, medicaminibus epotis, originem futuri hominis extinguant, et parricidium faciant antequam pariant."

18 See Labourt, _Recherches sur les Enfans trouves_, p. 25.

19 Among the barbarian laws there is a very curious one about a daily compensation for children who had been killed in the womb on account of the daily suffering of those children in h.e.l.l. "Propterea diuturnam judicaverunt antecessores nostri compositionem et judices postquam religio Christianitatis inolevit in mundo. Quia diuturnam postquam incarnationem suscepit anima, quamvis ad nativitatis lucem minima pervenisset, pat.i.tur pnam, quia sine sacramento regenerationis abortivo modo tradita est ad inferos."-_Leges Bajuvariorum_, t.i.t. vii. cap. xx. in Canciani, _Leges Barbar._ vol.

ii. p. 374. The first foundling hospital of which we have undoubted record is that founded at Milan, by a man named Datheus, in A.D.

789. Muratori has preserved (_Antich. Ital._ Diss. x.x.xvii.) the charter embodying the motives of the founder, in which the following sentences occur: "Quia frequenter per luxuriam hominum genus decipitur, et exinde malum homicidii generatur, dum concipientes ex adulterio, ne prodantur in publico, fetos teneros necant, _et absque baptismatis lavacro parvulos ad Tartara mittunt_, quia nullum reperiunt loc.u.m, quo servare vivos valeant," &c. Henry II. of France, 1556, made a long law against women who, "advenant le temps de leur part et delivrance de leur enfant, occultement s'en delivrent, puis le suffoquent et autrement suppriment _sans leur avoir fait empartir le Saint Sacrement du Bapteme_."-Labourt, _Recherches sur les Enfans trouves_, p. 47. There is a story told of a Queen of Portugal (sister to Henry V. of England, and mother of St. Ferdinand) that, being in childbirth, her life was despaired of unless she took a medicine which would accelerate the birth but probably sacrifice the life of the child. She answered that "she would not purchase her temporal life by sacrificing the eternal salvation of her son."-Bollandists, _Act. Sanctor._, June 5th.

20 Tillemont, _Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire ecclesiastique_ (Paris, 1701), tome x. p. 41. St. Clem. Alexand. says that infants in the womb and exposed infants have guardian angels to watch over them. (_Strom._ v.)

21 There is an extremely large literature devoted to the subject of infanticide, exposition, foundlings, &c. The books I have chiefly followed are Terme et Monfalcon, _Histoire des Enfans trouves_ (Paris, 1840); Remacle, _Des Hospices d'Enfans trouves_ (1838); Labourt, _Recherches historiques sur les Enfans trouves_ (Paris, 1848); Knigswarter, _Essai sur la Legislation des Peuples anciens et modernes relative aux Enfans nes hors Mariage_ (Paris, 1842).

There are also many details on the subject in G.o.defroy's Commentary to the laws about children in the Theodosian Code, in Malthus, _On Population_, in Edward's tract _On the State of Slavery in the Early and Middle Ages of Christianity_, and in most ecclesiastical histories.