rimitive German husband could sell
his children, and sometimes his wife, even into slavery. In the
eleventh century cases of wife-selling are still heard of, though
no longer recognized by law.

The traditions of Christianity were more favorable to sexual
equality than were Teutonic customs, but in becoming amalgamated
with those customs they added their own special contribution as
to woman's impurity. This spiritual inferiority of woman was
significantly shown by the restrictions sometimes placed on women
in church, and even in the right to enter a church; in some
places they were compelled to remain in the narthex, even in
non-monastic churches (see for these rules, Smith and Cheetham,
_Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_, art. "Sexes, Separation
of").

By attempting to desexualize the idea of man and to oversexualize
the idea of woman, Christianity necessarily degraded the position
of woman and the conception of womanhood. As Donaldson well
remarks, in pointing this out (op. cit., p. 182), "I may define
man as a male human being and woman as a female human being....
What the early Christians did was to strike the 'male' out of the
definition of man, and 'human being' out of the definition of
woman." Religion generally appears to be a powerfully depressing
influence on the position of woman notwithstanding the appeal
which it makes to woman. Westermarck considers, indeed (_Origin
and Development of the Moral Ideas_, vol. i, p. 669), that
religion "has probably been the most persistent cause of the
wife's subjection to her husband's rule."

It is sometimes said that the Christian tendency to place women
in an inferior spiritual position went so far that a church
council formally denied that women have souls. This foolish story
has indeed been repeated in a parrot-like fashion by a number of
writers. The source of the story is probably to be found in the
fact, recorded by Gregory of Tours, in his history (lib. viii,
cap. XX), that at the Council of Macon, in 585, a bishop was in
doubt as to whether the term "man" included woman, but was
convinced by the other members of the Council that it did. The
same difficulty has presented itself to lawyers in more modern
times, and has not always been resolved so favorably to woman as
by the Christian Council of Macon.