ept in Byzance, the glittering seat of Rome's surviving
dominion, and in Islam, the glowing empire further east, nowhere was there
light. Europe, pitch-black, became, almost in its entirety, subject to the
caprices of a hierarchy of despots who managed to be both stupid and
fierce, absolute autocrats, practically kings. To the suzerain they owed
homage at court, assistance in war; but in their own baronies, all power,
whether military, judiciary, or legislative, centred in them. They had the
further prerogative, which they abundantly abused, of maintaining
centuries of anarchy and intellectual night. The fief and the sword were
the investiture of their power. The donjon--a pillory on one side, a
gibbet on the other--was the symbol of their might. The blazon, with its
sanguinary and fabulous beasts, was emblematic of themselves. Could wolves
form a social order, their model would be that of these brutes, to whom
God was but a bigger tyrant. Their personal interest, which alone
prevented them from exterminating everybody, was the determining cause of
affranchisement when it came, and, when it did, was accompanied by
conditions always hard, often grotesque, and usually vile, among which was
the _jus primae noctis_ and the affiliated _marchetum_, subsequently
termed droit du seigneur, the dual right of poaching on maidenly and
marital preserves.[31]

With that, with drink and pillage for relaxations, the chief business of
the barons was war. When they descended from their keeps, it was to rob
and attack. There was no security, not a road was safe, war was an
intermittent fever and existence a panic.

In the constant assault and sack of burgs and keeps, the condition of
woman was perilous. Usually she was shut away more securely and remotely
than in the gynaeceum. If, to the detriment of her lord, she emerged, she
might have one of her lips cut off, both perhaps, or, more expeditiously,
be murdered. She never knew which beforehand. It was as it pleased him.
Penalties of this high-handedness were not sanctioned by law. There was
none. It was the right of might. Civilization outwearied had lapsed back
into eras in which women were things.

The lapse had ecclesiastical approbation. At the second council of Macon
it was debated whether woman should not be regarded as beyond the pale of
humanity and as appertaining to a degree intermediary between man and
beast. Subsequent councils put her outside of humanity also, but on a
pla