Women of the Romance Countries | Page 4

the men and the women of this
time were hopelessly swallowed up in a many-colored sea of ignorance,
from which, with the march of the centuries, they have been making
slow efforts to rise. So the lady sat in the great hall in the castle, clad in
some gorgeous gown of silk which had been brought by the patient
caravans, through devious ways, from the far and mysterious East;
surrounded by her privileged maidens, she spun demurely and in peace
and quiet, while out in the fields the back of the peasant woman was
bent in ceaseless toil. Or again, the lady of the manor would ride forth
with her lord when he went to the hunt, she upon her white palfrey, and
he upon his black charger, and each with hooded falcon on wrist; for
the gentle art of falconry was almost as much in vogue among the
women as among the men of the time. Often it happened that during the
course of the hunt it would be necessary to cross a newly planted field,
or one heavy with the ripened grain, and this they did gaily and with
never a thought for the hardship that they might cause; and as they
swept along, hot after the quarry, the poor, mistreated peasant, whether
man or woman, dared utter no word of protest or make moan, nor did
he or she dare to look boldly and unabashed upon this hunting scene,
but rather from the cover of some protecting thicket. Scenes of this
kind will serve to show the great gulf which there was between the
great and the lowly; and as there was an almost total lack of any sort of
education in the formal sense of the word, it will be readily understood
that all that education could mean for anybody was that training which
was incident to the daily round of life, whatever it happened to be. So
the poor and dependent learned to fear and sometimes to hate their

masters, and the proud and haughty learned to consider themselves as
superior and exceptional beings.
With society in such a state as this, the question will naturally arise:
What did the Church do under these circumstances to ameliorate the
condition of the people and to advance the cause of woman? The only
answer to this question is a sorry negative, as it soon becomes apparent,
after an investigation of the facts, that in many cases the members of
the clergy themselves were largely responsible for the wide prevalence
of vice and immorality. It must be remembered that absolution from sin
and crime in those days was but a matter of money price and that
pardons could be easily bought for any offence, as the venality of the
clergy was astounding. The corruption of the time was great, and the
priests themselves were steeped in crime and debauchery. In former
generations, the Church at Rome had many times issued strict orders
against the marriage of the clergy, and, doubtless as one of the
consequences of this regulation, it had become the custom for many of
the priests to have one or more concubines with whom they, in most
cases, lived openly and without shame. The monasteries became, under
these conditions, dens of iniquity, and the nunneries were no better.
The nunnery of Saint Fara in the eleventh century, according to a
contemporary description, was no longer the residence of holy virgins,
but a brothel of demoniac females who gave themselves up to all sorts
of shameless conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same
general tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the
cause of public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both
concubinage and simony--or the then prevalent custom of buying or
selling ecclesiastical preferment; but the edict was too harsh and
unreasonable with regard to the first, inasmuch as it provided that no
priest should marry in the future, and that those who already possessed
wives or concubines were to give them up or relinquish their sacred
offices. This order caused great consternation, especially in Milan,
where the clergy were honestly married, each man to one wife, and it
was found impossible to exact implicit obedience to its requirements.
So far as the general influence of women upon the feudal society of
Italy in the eleventh century is concerned, it is not discoverable to have

been manifest in the ways which were common in other countries. It
will be understood, of course, that, in speaking of woman's influence
here, reference is made to the women of the upper classes, as those of
the peasant class cannot be said to have formed a part of social Europe
at this time. It is most common to read in all accounts of this