natural love of the sexes. The horrors to which women were subjected in monasteries, priests' brothels, and courts of inquisition we will entirely omit.[1] On the other hand, we shall attach no importance to the fact that at certain periods of the Middle Ages single women acquired distinction as artists, authors, etc. They acquired it, so to speak, merely as a reflex of monastic life. They were regarded as nuns, not as women.
After Christian contempt and abuse of women had reached the extreme, it began in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to retrace its steps to the other extreme, to glorify them and make them objects of idolatry. That brings us to the time of those noble knights who as highway robbers at one moment slew their fellow-men, and the next moment, as sighing paladins, lay on their knees before their lady-love. That these mooncalves even at a later time could be regarded as
- ↑ Marriage was only a necessary evil to Christian priests, and open intercourse of the sexes a horror; thus arose celibacy, the mode of life of monks, etc. Some sought to attain to the loftiest height of the Christian spirit by actually unmanning themselves; other priests, on the other hand, indulged their passions to such an extent that they openly claimed the jus primæ noctis, and enforced it with truly Christian zeal. Marriages which were consecrated in this manner were thought to be especially blessed and continually hovered about by the holy ghost. After some reflection this seems obvious, and it would be indeed astonishing if the holy ghost had only once experienced an inclination to descend to a people who honored him so gratefully.
