emain Abelard's mistress
rather than destroy his prospects of advancement in the Church.[182]

To the more strict enforcement of priestly celibacy, the barons were
permitted to make slaves of the wives and children of married priests.
While by common law children were held as following the condition of
their fathers, under Church legislation they were held to follow the
condition of their mothers. Serf mothers have thus borne serf children
to free-born fathers, and slave mothers have borne slave children to
their masters; while unmarried mothers still bear bastard children to
unknown fathers, the Church thus throwing the taint of illegitimacy
upon the innocent. The relations of man and woman to each other, the
sinfulness of marriage, and the license of illicit relations employed
most of the thought of the Church.[183] The duty of woman to obey, not
only her husband, but all men by virtue of their sex, was sedulously
inculcated. She was trained to hold her own desires and even her own
thoughts in complete abeyance to those of man; father, husband,
brother, son, priest, alike held themselves as her rightful masters,
and every holy principle of her nature was subverted in this most
degrading assumption. A great many important effects followed the full
establishment of priestly celibacy. The doctrine of woman's inherent
wickedness took new strength; a formal prohibition of the Scriptures
to the laity was promulgated from Toulouse in the twelfth century; the
canon law gained control of the civil law; the absolute sinfulness of
divorce, which had been maintained in councils, yet allowed by the
civil law, was established; the Inquisition arose; the persecution of
woman for witchcraft took on a new phase, and a tendency to suicide
was developed. The wives of priests rendered homeless, and with their
children suddenly ranked among the vilest of the earth, were powerless
and despairing, and not a few of them shortened their agony by death
at their own hands. For all these crimes the Church was directly
responsible.

Priestly celibacy did not cause priestly purity of life,[184] but
looking upon themselves as especially sanctified and set apart by
virtue of that celibacy, priests made their holy office the cover of
the most degrading sensuality.[185] Methods were taken to debauch the
minds of women as well as their bodies. As late as the seventeenth
century it was taught that a priest could commit no sin. This was an
old doctrine