eriority of woman an act of God. On the other hand, the Church
referred everything to one unchanging authoritative source, the Gospels
and the writings of the Apostles; faith and authority took the place of
reason; and any attempt to question the injunctions of the Bible was
regarded as an act of impiety, to be punished accordingly. And as the
various regulations about women had now a divine sanction, the
permanence of these convictions was doubly assured.

SOURCES

I. The Bible.

II. Patrologia Latina: edidit J.P. Migne. Parisiis. 221 volumes
(finished 1864).

NOTES:

[212] _Matthew_ 5, 27 ff.

[213] _Matthew_ 5, 31 ff.; id. 19, 3 ff. _Mark_ 10, 2-12. _Luke_ 16, 18.

[214] Plutarch lived in the second century A.D.; but he has inherited
the Greek point of view and advises a wife to bear with meekness the
infidelities of the husband--see _Praecep. Coniug_., 16. His words are
often curiously similar to those of the Apostles, e.g., _Coniug.
Praecep_., 33: "The husband shall rule the wife not as if master of a
chattel, but as the soul does the body." Id. 37: "Wives who are sensible
will be silent when their husbands are angry and vent their passion;
when their husbands are silent, then let them speak to them and mollify
them." However, like the Apostles, he enjoins upon husbands to honour
their wives; his essay on the "Virtues of Women"--[Greek: gynaikon
aretai]--is an affectionate tribute to their worth.

Some of the respectable Puritan gentlemen at Rome also held that a wife
be content to be a humble admirer of her husband (e.g., Pliny, _Paneg_.,
83, hoc efficiebat, quod mariti minores erant ... nam uxori sufficit
obsequii gloria, etc.). But Roman law insisted that what was morally
right for the man was equally so for the woman; just as it compelled a
husband himself to observe chastity, if he expected it from his wife.

[215] _Ecclesiasticus_ 42, 14.

[216] _Leviticus_ xii, 1-5.

[217] _Romans_ 7, 2-4.

[218] _Corinthians_ i, 7, 39.

[219] _Corinthians_ i, 7, 1 ff.

[220] _Corinthians_ i, 7, 37.

[221] _Ephesians_ 5, 22 and 33.

[222] _Peter_ i, 3, 7.

[223] _Corinthians_ i, 14, 34.

[224] _Timothy_ i, 2, 12-15.

[225] _Corinthians_ i, II, 8.

[226] _Timothy_ i, 2, 9. _Peter_ i, 3.

[227] Abelard, Ep., 9, in vol. 178, p. 325, of Migne: Beatus Hieronymus
... tanto magis necessarium amorem huius studii (i.e. the Scriptures)
censuit, quanto eas naturaliter infirmiriores et carne debiliores esse