THE SOUTH.
15
of which we have been speaking would seem
to have been doing even less to protect and
elevate woman than the little done by secular
society. The Church as an organization
committed a double offense against woman in
the Middle Ages. Making of marriage a sac¬
rament and at the same time insisting on the
celibacy of the clergy and other religious or¬
ders, she gave an inferior if not an impure
character to the marriage relation, especially
fitted to reflect discredit on woman. Would
this were all or the worst! but the Church by
the licentiousness of its chosen servants in¬
vaded the household and established too often
as vicious connections those relations which it
• forbade to assume openly and in good faith.
"Thus," to use the words of our authority,
" the religions corps became as numerous, as
searching, and as unclean as the frogs of
Egypt, which penetrated into all quarters,
into the ovens and kneading troughs, leaving
their filthy trail wherever they went." Says
Chaucer with characteristic satire, speaking
of the Friars:
' Women may now go safely up and doun,
In every bush, and under every tree,
Ther is non other incubus but he,
And he ne will don hem no dishonour.'
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