The Middle Ages are as full of lovable and admirable women as the Renaissance is of sinister and regrettable representatives of the same sex. They had no votes and they claimed no rights; they were less welcome at birth than princes, and they were incontinently (and often prodigally) married off without a “by your leave” by their scheming fathers. Wholly subservient both in principle and in law, they were anything but this in fact, and a study of the Middle Ages reveals a certain feminine dominance that is startling to the male of to-day. It is well to remember that the clinging type, with the ringlets and facile emotions and tears, is a product of modern civilisation; mediævalism knew nothing of it, and little of that even less attractive aspect that always becomes conspicuous when society is breaking down at the end of an era; a Catherine of Russia, while not without prototypes in the Middle Ages, would have been as anomalous then as a Blanche of Castile in the eighteenth century. Apparently, the only conspicuous differences between the men and women of mediævalism were that the men did the fighting and most of the active or violent work, while the women directed their courses, corrected their mistakes, and built up their character and that of their children; and that the men confined themselves to the tactics while the women controlled the major strategy of the battle of life. The glitter and the show remained with the men, the substance of power remained with the women, and as their vision is apt to be wider and more penetrating it is fortunate that this was so. Of course it was all a part of the very real supremacy of Christianity over all domains of activity, all phases of life and thought. As soon as its power began to lapse and old pagan theories came in with the Renaissance, while Our Lady and the saints were dethroned by the Reformation, the wholesome balance was overthrown and women slowly fell back to that earlier position where the only defence against male oppression was the power of sex, the result being those artificial barriers and differences, and the unwholesome bartering of bribes and promises and threats, that always have resulted, and always will, in a complete downfall of personal and social righteousness. The problem to-day is not how women are to get the ballot but how they are to regain their old mediæval equality (or supremacy if you like) without it. During mediævalism men were more masculine and women more feminine than ever before or since, and in all probability a good part of the ethical, cultural, and social success of the time was due to this fact and to the absence of artificial barriers that denied to demonstrated character and to proved capacity the opportunity of effective service.