THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 307
The Church's Efforts to Improve Imperial Society
20.15. The Church's Efforts to Improve Imperial Society
But the efforts of Christianity in behalf of the weak are nowhere seen more clearly than in the uplifting of women. The Church gave them a place of consideration in her ministry, not however the privilege of preaching or administering the sacraments, though a deaconess was allowed to assist in the baptism of women. Besides the carefully regulated orders of deaconesses, virgins, and widows, there arose towards the end of the fourth century classes of widows and virgins of higher rank who gave themselves to voluntary work under church auspices, without taking regular vows or living in communities. Such were Jerome's friends and correspondents, Paula and Eustochium. In the East, where this class attained a position of greater prominence than in the West (the Roman spirit was averse from the public ministry of women), they approximated to an order and were finally assimilated to the deaconesses.
Outside the ministry of the Church women were made the subject of special legislation. Constantine was austere in morals. The age was loose. The antique ideal of the Roman nation had long since disappeared. Constantine determined to restore it. The severity of his measures against adultery and rape shews his zeal in the cause of morality, while the terms of those which regulate the relations of women to the courts exhibit his care for their good fame and the matris familiae majestas. Thus to spare their modesty wives were forbidden to appear in court at all.
His tenderness is also seen in his forbidding a son to disinherit his mother, and in the exemption of widows from the penalties visited on coiners. On the other hand there are signs, both in contemporary legislation and literature, of unchristian and brutal contempt for the women who had most need of protection. Tavern-keepers and barmaids are set free from the operation of the laws against adultery, "since chaste conduct is only expected of those who are restrained by the bonds of law, and immunity must be extended to those whose worthless life has set them beyond the pale of the laws." Again, it is difficult to understand the mind of Augustine, who loves his natural son Adeodatus as David loved the child of Bathsheba, and who yet has regret, but no word of pity, for the mother whom he cast off. So Sidonius Apollinaris, the aristocratic bishop of Auvergne, is very lenient towards the irregularities of a young noble, and quite heartless towards the victim.
But in the latter case it must be remembered that the Christianity of Sidonius was not very deep, that the girl was a slave, and that for all their good intentions and growing instincts of humanity the Church and churchmen did not yet regard slaves as free; and in the former, that concubinage, i.e. the association of one man with one woman, was recognised by Roman law and by the Council of Toledo (A.D. 400) and hardly differed from wedlock except in name. What is astonishing to modern notions in the case of Augustine and his mistresses is not so much his own conduct as the line taken by his friends and the saintly Monnica, and too readily adopted by himself. Something like a mariage de convenance was projected for him while he was still attached to a woman whom there is no reason to suppose unworthy to become his wife, in the hope that as soon as he was married he might be washed clean in saving baptism. Monnica was indeed more concerned by his Manichaeism than by his irregular life.
The incident reveals a flaw in a great character. But if that were all it would have no place here. It is of value to our purpose as illustrating the view of the relation between the sexes held at this time, and as a witness to the vastness of the task that lay before the Church in purifying and uplifting society.
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