n hundred years after the royal edict against its practice.
These customs of feudalism were the customs of Christianity during
many centuries.[191] These infamous outrages upon woman were enforced
under Christian law by both Church and State.[192]

The degradation of the husband at this infringement of the lord
spiritual and temporal upon his marital right, has been pictured by
many writers, but history has been quite silent upon the despair and
shame of the wife. No hope appeared for woman anywhere. The Church,
which should have been the great conserver of morals, dragged her to
the lowest depths, through the vileness of its priestly customs. The
State, which should have defended her civil rights, followed the
example of the Church in crushing her to the earth. God Himself
seemed to have forsaken woman. Freedom for the peasants was found
alone at night. Known as the Birds of the Night, Foxes and Birds of
Prey, it was only at these night assemblages they enjoyed the least
happiness or security. Here, with wives and daughters, they met
together to talk, of their gross outrages. Out of these foul wrongs
grew the sacrifice of the "Black Mass," with woman as officiating
priestess, in which the rites of the Church were travestied in solemn
mockery, and defiance cast at that heaven which seemed to permit the
priest and lord alike to trample upon all the sacred rights of
womanhood in the names of religion and law.

During this mocking service a true sacrifice of wheat was offered to
the Spirit of the Earth who made wheat to grow, and loosened birds
bore aloft to the God of Freedom the sighs and prayers of the serfs
asking that their descendants might be free. We can not do otherwise
than regard this sacrifice as the most acceptable offering made in
that day of moral degradation, a sacrifice and prayer more holy than
all the ceremonials of the Church. This service, where woman, by
virtue of her greater despair, acted both as altar and priest, opened
by the following address and prayer: "I will come before Thine altar,
but save me, O Lord, from the faithless and violent man!" (from the
priest and the baron).[193] From these assemblages, known as "Sabbat,"
or "the Sabbath," from the old Pagan Midsummer-day sacrifice to
"Bacchus Sabiesa," rose the belief in the "Witches' Sabbath," which
for several hundred years formed a new source of accusation against
women, and sent tens of thousands of them to the most horrible death.

Not