A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
History
A Short History of Women's Rights: From the Days of Augustus to the Present Time. with Special Reference to England and the United States. Second Edition Revised, With Additions.
Hecker, Eugene A. (Eugene Arthur)
Women's rights -- History
It is always to be remembered that although the statutes were severe
enough, yet during this period, as indeed throughout all history, they
were defied with impunity. Charlemagne, for example, the most Christian
monarch, had a large number of concubines and divorced a wife who did
not please him; yet his biographer Einhard, pious monk as he was, has no
word of censure for his monarch's irregularities[326]; and policy
prevented the Church from thundering at a king who so valiantly crushed
the heretics, her enemies. Bishop Gregory of Tours tells us without a
hint of being shocked that Clothacharius, King of the Franks, had many
concubines.[327] Concubinage was, in fact, the regular thing.[328] But
neither in that age, nor later in the case of Louis XIV, nor in our own
day in the case of Leopold of Belgium has the Church had a word of
reproach for monarchs who broke with impunity moral laws on which she
claims always to have insisted without compromise.
[Sidenote: Remarriage.]
In accordance with the commands of Scripture neither the divorced man
nor the divorced woman could marry again during the lifetime of the
other party. To do so was to commit adultery, for which the usual
penalties went into effect.
[Sidenote: Property rights and powers.]
A woman's property would consist of any or all of these:
I. Her share of the property of parents or brothers and sisters.
II. Her dowry and whatever nuptial donations (_morgengabe_) her husband
had given her, and whatever she had earned together with her husband.
There could be no account of single women's property or disposal of what
they earned, because in the half-civilised state of things which then
obtained there was no such thing as women engaging in business; indeed,
not even men of any pretension did so; war was their work. The unmarried
woman was content to sit by the fire and spin under the guardianship
and support of a male relative. Often she would enter a convent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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