But, during the conflict of laws with manners, the Franks invaded the
Gauls and gave to the country the dear name of France. These warriors
came from the North and brought the system of gallantry which had
originated in their western regions, where the mingling of the sexes
did not require in those icy climates the jealous precautions of the
East. The women of that time elevated the privations of that kind of
life by the exaltation of their sentiments. The drowsy minds of the day
made necessary those varied forms of delicate solicitation, that
versatility of address, the fancied repulse of coquetry, which belong
to the system whose principles have been unfolded in our First Part, as
admirably suited to the temperate clime of France.
To the East, then, belong the passion and the delirium of passion, the
long brown hair, the harem, the amorous divinities, the splendor, the
poetry of love and the monuments of love.— To the West, the liberty of
wives, the sovereignty of their blond locks, gallantry, the fairy life
of love, the secrecy of passion, the profound ecstasy of the soul, the
sweet feelings of melancholy and the constancy of love.
These two systems, starting from opposite points of the globe, have
come into collision in France; in France, where one part of the
country, Languedoc, was attracted by Oriental traditions, while the
other, Languedoil, was the native land of a creed which attributes to
woman a magical power. In the Languedoil, love necessitates mystery, in
the Languedoc, to see is to love.
At the height of this struggle came the triumphant entry of
Christianity into France, and there it was preached by women, and there
it consecrated the divinity of a woman who in the forests of Brittany,
of Vendee and of Ardennes took, under the name of Notre-Dame, the place
of more than one idol in the hollow of old Druidic oaks.
If the religion of Christ, which is above all things a code of morality
and politics, gave a soul to all living beings, proclaimed that
equality of all in the sight of God, and by such principles as these
fortified the chivalric sentiments of the North, this advantage was
counterbalanced by the fact, that the sovereign pontiff resided at
Rome, of which seat he considered himself the lawful heir, through the
universality of the Latin tongue, which became that of Europe during
the Middle Ages, and through the keen interest taken by monks, writers
and lawyers in establishing the ascendency of certain codes, discovered
by a soldier in the sack of Amalfi.
These two principles of the servitude and the sovereignty of women
retain possession of the ground, each of them defended by fresh
arguments.
The Salic law, which was a legal error, was a triumph for the principle
of political and civil servitude for women, but it did not diminish the
power which French manners accorded them, for the enthusiasm of
chivalry which prevailed in Europe supplanted the party of manners
against the party of law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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