In the “Internationale Wochenschrift” Heinrich Finke pointed out that he had examined hundreds of Late-mediæval sermons on the position of women, with the result, that “it is impossible to discover in them any contempt for woman.”[439] The fact is, that “there exist countless statements of the sanctity of marriage and its sacramental character ... statements drawn from theologians of the highest standing, Fathers, Saints and Doctors of the Church. Indeed, towards the close of the Middle Ages, they grow still more numerous. The most popular of the monks, whether Franciscans or Dominicans, have left us matrimonial handbooks which imply the existence of that simple, happy family life they depict and encourage.”[440] Finke recalls the 15th-century theologian, Raymond of Sabunde, who points out how union with God in love may be reproduced in marriage. Countless theologians are at one with him here, and follow Scripture in representing the union of Christ with the Church as an exalted figure of the marriage-bond between man and wife (Eph. v. 25, 32). Of the respect which the ancient Church exhibited towards women Finke declares: “Never has the praise of women been sung more loudly than in the sermons of the Fathers and in the theological tractates of the Schoolmen.” Here “one picture follows another, each more dazzling than the last.”[441] Certainly we must admit, as he does, that it is for the most part the ideal of virginity which inspires them, and that it is the good, chaste, virtuous wife and widow whom they extol, rather than woman _qua_ woman, as a noble part of God’s creation. Their vocation as spiritual teachers naturally explains this; and if, for the same cause, they seem to be very severe in their strictures on feminine faults, or to strike harsh notes in their warnings on the spiritual dangers of too free intercourse with the female sex, this must not be looked upon as “hatred of women,” as has been done erroneously on the strength of some such passages in the case of St. Antoninus of Florence and Cardinal Dominici.[442] “Just as Church and Councils energetically took the side of marriage” when it was decried in certain circles,[443] so the accusation of recent times that, in the Middle Ages, woman was universally looked upon with contempt, cannot stand; according to Finke this was not the case, even in “ascetical circles,” and “still less elsewhere.”[444] The author adduces facts which “utterly disprove any such general disdain for woman.”[445]