complex phenomena as a whole, the maintenance of an inequality to the
disadvantage of women. The fine legacy of Roman law to Europe was indeed
favorable to women, but that legacy was dispersed and for the most part
lost in the more predominating influence of tenacious Teutonic custom
associated with the vigorously organized Christian Church. Notwithstanding
that the facts do not all point in the same direction, and that there is
consequently some difference of opinion, it seems evident that on the
whole both Teutonic custom and Christian religion were unfavorable to the
equality of women with men. Teutonic custom in this matter was determined
by two decisive factors: (1) the existence of marriage by purchase which
although, as Crawley has pointed out, it by no means necessarily involves
the degradation of women, certainly tends to place them in an inferior
position, and (2) pre-occupation with war which is always accompanied by a
depreciation of peaceful and feminine occupations and an indifference to
love. Christianity was at its origin favorable to women because it
liberated and glorified the most essentially feminine emotions, but when
it became an established and organized religion with definitely ascetic
ideals, its whole emotional tone grew unfavorable to women. It had from
the first excluded them from any priestly function. It now regarded them
as the special representatives of the despised element of sex in
life.[290] The eccentric Tertullian had once declared that woman was
_janua Diaboli_; nearly seven hundred years later, even the gentle and
philosophic Anselm wrote: _Femina fax est Satanae_.[291]

Thus among the Franks, with whom the practice of monogamy
prevailed, a woman was never free; she could not buy or sell or
inherit without the permission of those to whom she belonged. She
passed into the possession of her husband by acquisition, and
when he fixed the wedding day he gave her parents coins of small
money as _arrha_, and the day after the wedding she received from
him a present, the _morgengabe_. A widow belonged to her parents
again (Bedolliere, _Histoire de Moeurs des Francais_,
vol. i, p. 180). It is true that the Salic law ordained a
pecuniary fine for touching a woman, even for squeezing her
finger, but it is clear that the offence thus committed was an
offence against property, and by no means against the sanctity of
a woman's personality. The p